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CHILDREN'S STORIES 



IN 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 



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CHILDREN'S Stories 



IN 



AMERICAN LITERATURE 

1 660- 1 860 



./ 

Henrietta Christian Wright 




^%^^'>^ 



NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1895 



K^ 






Copyright, 1S95, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



TROW DIRECTORY 

PRlNTiNQ AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 

NEW YORK 



r 

Q 



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CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 



PAGE 



The Early Literature, i 

CHAPTER H 
John James Audubon — 17S0-1S51, 14 

CHAPTER HI 
Washington Irving — 17S3-1859, 28 

CHAPTER IV 
James Fenimore Cooper — 17S9-1851, 51 

CHAPTER V 
William Cullen Bryant — 1794-1878, 69 



CHAPTER VI 
William H. Prescott — 1796-1859, 82 



vi CONTENTS 

CHAPTER VII PAGE 

John Greenleaf Whittier— 1807-1892, . . . . 9^ 

CHAPTER VIII 
Nathaniel Hawthorne— 1804-1S64, 108 

CHAPTER IX 
George Bancroft— 1800-1891, 123 

CHAPTER X 
Edgar Allan Poe—i 809-1 849, i37 

CHAPTER XI 
Ralph Waldo Emerson— 1803-18S2, i49 

CHAPTER XII 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow— 1807-1882, . . .156 

CHAPTER XIII 
John Lothrop Motley— 1814-1877, . . .- . . i74 

CHAPTER XIV 
Harriet Beecher Stowe — iSii , 1S8 



CONTENTS vii 



CHAPTER XV PAGE 

James Russell Lowell — 1819-1892, 203 

CHAPTER XVI 

Francis Parkman — 1823-1893, 219 

CHAPTER XVn 

Oliver Wendell PIolmes—i 809-1 894, -234 



CHAPTER I 

THE EARLY LITERATURE 

One Sunday morning, about the year 1661, a 
group of Indians was gathered around a noble- 
looking man, listening to a story he was reading. 
It was summer and the day was beautiful, and the 
little Indian children who sat listening were so in- 
terested that not even the thought of their favor- 
ite haunts by brookside or meadow could tempt 
them from the spot. The story was about the 
life of Christ and his mission to the world, and 
the children had heard it many times, but to-day 
it seemed new to them because it was read in 
their own language, which had never been printed 
before. This v/as the Mohegan tongue, which 
was spoken in different dialects by the Indians 
generally throughout Massachusetts ; and al- 
though it had been used for hundreds of years 
by the tribes in that part of the country its ap- 



THE EARLY LITERATURE 



pcarance on paper was as strange to them as if 
it had been a language of which they knew not 
a single word. It was just as strange to them, 
in fact, as if they had heard one of their war 
cries or love songs set to music, or had seen a 
picture of their dreams of the happy hunting 
grounds in that invisible western world where 
the sun went every night, and which they ex- 
pected to see only after death. 

The man who was reading the old story was 
John Eliot, an English missionary, who had de- 
voted his life to the Indians, and whose am- 
bition it was to leave behind him as his greatest 
gift the Bible translated into their own tongue. 
With this in view he set about making them 
familiar with the Christian faith, and established 
Sunday-schools among them, where men, women, 
and children alike were instructed. 

From time to time they heard read stories from 
the New Testament which Eliot had translated, 
and in which he was greatly helped by one or 
two Indians who had gifts as translators, and 
could express the English thought into Indian 
words more fitting and beautiful than Eliot him- 



THE EARLY LITERATURE 



self could have done. In all his earlier mission- 
ary work he also had the assistance of the great 
sachem Waban, because, as it happened, the first 
sermon Eliot ever preached to the Indians was 
delivered in Waban's wigwam. The text was 
from the old poetic words of Ezekiel — '' Say to 
the wind, Thus saith the Lord God," etc. 

The Indian name for wind was Waban, the 
old sachem's name, and he thought the sermon 
was addressed to him. He became an ardent 
convert and helped Eliot greatly in his work of 
Christianizing the tribes, and in particular in his 
trouble to keep peace among the sachems, who 
objected to the freedom of thought which the 
new religion taught, thinking that it interfered 
with their own authority over their people. 

In a little book in which Eliot describes these 
grievances of the chiefs he calls them Pills for 
the Sachems, and says they were much harder to 
swallow than even the nauseous doses of their 
medicine men. 

For the better instruction of the Indian chil- 
dren Eliot prepared a small primer, which was 
printed in 1669, eight years after the New Testa- 



THE EARLY LITERATURE 



ment was printed. It was a curious little book, 
having the alphabet in large and small letters on 
the fly-leaf, and containing the Apostles' Creed, 
the Catechism, and the Lord's Prayer, w^th other 
religious matter. Out of this primer the Indian 
youth learned to read and to spell in words of 
one syllable. When he was able to master the 
whole Bible, which was printed in 1663, his edu- 
cation was considered complete. 

This old Indian Bible, which Eliot was ten 
years in translating, was printed at Cambridge 
and bound in dark blue morocco, it being the 
first Bible and one of the first books ever printed 
in America. Two hundred copies were made, 
and a second edition contained a dedication to 
Charles II. of England, praising him for his 
goodness in distributing the word of God among 
his colonies, which had not yielded him gold and 
silver as the Spanish colonies had yielded their 
sovereign, but which would nevertheless redound 
to his immortal glory as the first-fruits of Chris- 
tianity among those heathen tribes. The dedica- 
tion took up two pages, which was about all the 
English the old book contained, the rest being 



THE EARLY LITERATURE 



in that curious, half-musical, half-guttural tongue 
of the Mohegans, which Cotton Mather said had 
been growing since the time of the confusion of 
tongues at the Tower of Babel. Certainly some 
of the words are of such mighty length and 
awful sound that we may well believe the same 
old preacher when he says that he knew from 
personal knowledge that demons could under- 
stand Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, but that they 
were utterly baffled by the speech of the Ameri- 
can Indians. 

Very few of these Bibles now exist, and those 
are of priceless value to lovers of old books. 

One of the earliest books that may be claimed 
as belonofinof to American letters was a volume 
descriptive of the early settlements in Virginia 
by Captain John Smith. It has great value as a 
representation of Indian life before its contact 
with white civilization. Smith had followed the 
army of England through the greater part of 
Europe and Asia and knew the life of a soldier 
of fortune. He had fought with Turks, hunted 
Tartars, and had ahvays been the hero of the 
occasion. The Indian to him was but another 



THE EARLY LITERATURE 



kind of hccitheii to subdue, and the book is full 
of adv^entures, in which he describes himself as 
always intrepid and victorious. This is the ear- 
liest book that brings the Indians of the colonies 
closely before our eyes, and its style is good, and 
shows that strong, terse, English fibre which char- 
acterized the writings of the adventurous English- 
man of that time. In another book Smith gives 
a charming description of inland Virginia, whose 
birds, flowers, wild animals, rivers, and scenery 
are discussed in a poetic fashion that throws a 
new lio^ht on the character of the adventurous 
soldier. There is in both volumes a richness of 
description in the details of Indian life that pos- 
sesses a rare value to the student. The story of 
Smith's visit to Powhatan, the father of Poca- 
hontas, reads like a bit of oriental fairy lore, and 
the great Indian chief, seated upon his couch 
of skins, with his savage guard around him, is 
brought as vividly before our eyes as the hero 
of a romance. And so Smith's books stand 
for good literature, though written only with the 
idea of familiarizing the people at home with 
the condition of the new colony, and they make 



THE EARLY LITERATURE 



no mean showing as the beginning of American 
letters. 

In New England literature from the first par- 
took inevitably of the Puritan character. There 
were long journals of the pilgrim fathers, books 
on books of sermons, and volume after volume 
of argument on the burning religious questions 
that had been heard in England since the first* 
Puritan defied the king and openly declared for 
freedom of conscience. Among the most cele- 
brated of these old books is the Bay Psalm Book 
of 1640, in which the psalms of David were done 
into metre for the use of congregations. This 
book, in which the beautiful Hebrew poetry is 
tortured into the most abominable English, is a 
fair example of the religious verse-making of the 
day. 

A curious book was the first almanac, pub- 
lished at Cambridge in 1689, and which con- 
tained prognostications of the weather, dates of 
historical events, general news of the world, and 
bits of poetry, having also blank spaces for the 
use of the owner, who could either utilize them 
for preserving his own verses, as Cotton Mather 



THE EARLY LITERATURE 



did, or keep therein his accounts with his wig 
maker and hair-dresser, as did that worthy Puri- 
tan Thomas Prince. 

Perhaps the greatest poet of those early times 
was Anne Bradstreet, who wrote her famous 
poems on the Assyrian, Persian, Grecian, and 
Roman monarchies, and who was called the 
tenth muse by an admiring public. These 
works are long and learned, but they show less 
the poetic spirit of the age than do the short 
but pointed ballads that sprang up from time to 
time and which indicated the popular feeling 
over the events that were making the history of 
New England. These ballads were on every 
conceivable subject, from the Day of Judgment 
to the sale of a cow. The war between England 
and France for the possession of Canada gave 
rise to many ditties the tunes of which remained 
popular long afterward. The Indian wars also 
furnished material for many. They were printed 
in almanacs, or loose sheets, and sometimes not 
printed at all. They served as news-venders 
long before the first newspaper was published 
(in 1690) and they expressed, as nothing else 



THE EARLY LITERATURE 



could have done, the attitude of the people to- 
ward the church, the state, the governor, and 
even the " tidy m.an" (tithing-man), whose duty 
it was to tickle with a hazel rod any young- 
ster who was unlucky enough to fall asleep in 
church. Later, in revolutionary times, the ballad 
became a power second to none. Here first 
appears that great hero Yankee Doodle, who 
comes, like will-o'-the-wisp, from no one knows 
where, although many learned pages have been 
written to show his nationality. He seems to 
have been as great a traveller as Marco Polo 
or Baron Munchausen, and, like them, he must 
have seen many strange sights and countries. 
Perhaps he may have a trace of the gypsy in 
him and could recall, if he liked, strange wander- 
ings through the Far East. He may have been 
a camp-follower through the German and Flem- 
ish wars. It is more than probable that he hob- 
nobbed with the Italian banditti, and took an 
elfish delight in depriving honest travellers of 
their wits and purses. We know that he lived 
for a time in Holland, where he seems to have 
preferred a peaceful Hfe and was content with 



lO THE EARLY LITERATURE 

the humdrum existence of those worthy Dutch 
farmers who invited him to their feasts, welcomed 
him to their roofs, and sang his praises in their 
harvest-fields in such stirring words as these : 

Yanker didel doodel down, 
Didel dudel lanter; 
Yanke viver voover vown, 
Botermilk iin tanther; 

which means that if the lads and lassies reaped 
and gleaned faithfully they should be rewarded 
by a tenth of the grain, and an unlimited supply 
of buttermilk. 

Afterward Yankee Doodle seems to have tired 
of pastoral life, for we find him in the midst of 
Roundhead and Cavalier upon the battle-fields 
of England during the Civil War. No doubt 
such a jolly comrade felt a tinge of sadness at 
the misfortunes of the unlucky Charles I., and 
he could not have found the long-faced Puritans, 
with their nasal voices, very good company for 
such a happy-go-lucky as himself. At any rate 
he never became an Englishman, and seems only 
to have paused in England while making up his 
mind where to settle down and spend his old 



THE EARLY LITERATURE 



age. He probably made his first bow in America 
in 1/75, ^^^^1 ^t ^s evident that he took a fancy to 
the new country, and was pleased, and perhaps 
flattered, by the reception he met. With his old 
abandon he threw himself heart and soul into 
the conflict, and became, in fact, the child of the 
Revolution. He was a leading spirit every- 
where. Throwing all recollections of English 
hospitality to the winds, he chased the red coats 
at Bunker Hill, gave them a drubbing at Ben- 
nington, and remained bravely in the rear to 
watch their scouts while Washington retreated 
from Long Island. Many a time he w^as the 
sole support of the faithful few stationed to 
guard some important outpost ; many a time he 
marched along with the old Continentals, grim 
and faithful, expecting every moment would re- 
veal danger and perhaps death. 

He crossed the Delaware with Washington 
on that eventful Christmas night, in 1775, 
though the Italian blood in him must have 
shrunk a little from the cold. He stood shoul- 
der to shoulder with the great leader through 
all the misery and hopelessness of Valley Forge. 



12 THE EARLY LITERATURE 

He was joyously welcomed by the soldiers in all 
their daring escapades when breaking loose from 
the restraints of camp life ; and the women and 
children w^ho had to remain home and suffer 
danger and privation alone, never saw his honest 
face without a smile. 

Such devotion met with its reward. When the 
war was over the old veteran retired from the ser- 
vice with full military rank, and was brevetted an 
American citizen besides. It is pleasant to think 
that he has at last found a resting place among 
a people who will always honor and love him. 

Two other ballads very popular at that time 
were The Battle of Trenton and The Massacre 
of Wyoming, while innumerable ones of lesser 
note were sung by fireside and camp-fire, all 
through the colonies. 

In New York the first liberty pole raised in 
the country was planted by the Sons of Liberty, 
a band of patriotic Americans, who set it up 
again and again as- it was cut down by the Tories, 
accompanying their work by singing every im- 
aginable kind of ballad that would irritate the 
breast of the British sympathizers. 



THE EARLY LITERATURE 1 3 

During the war of 1812, came the Star Span- 
gled Banner, written to the accompaniment of 
shot and shell, while the author, Francis S. Key, 
was a prisoner on shipboard watching the bom- 
bardment of Fort McHenry by the British, in 
the harbor of Baltimore. The song was born 
in the darkness of a night of terrible anxiety, 
and when the dawn broke and found the flag 
still floating over the fort, an earnest of the vic- 
tory to come, its triumphant measures seemed 
the fitting paean of American liberty. 

The baflad of the camps had developed into 
the national anthem. 



CHAPTER II 

JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 

1780 — 1851 

In the days when Louisiana was a province of 
Spain a little dark-eyed boy used to wander 
among the fields and groves of his father's plan- 
tation studying with eager delight the works of 
nature around him. 

Lying under the orange -trees watching the 
mocking-bird, or learning from his mother's lips 
the names of the flowers that grew in every cor- 
ner of the plantation, he soon came to feel that he 
was part of that beautiful world, whose language 
was the songs of birds and whose boundaries ex- 
tended to every place where a blossom lifted its 
head above the green sod.- To him, as he said 
years afterward, the birds were playmates and 
the flowers dear friends, and before he could dis- 
tinguish between the azure of the sky and the 



JOHN JAMES AUDUBON I 5 



emerald of the grass he had formed an intimacy 
with them so close and endearing that whenever 
removed from their presence he felt a loneliness 
almost unbearable. No other companions suited 
him so well, and no roof seemed so secure as that 
formed of the dense foliage under v/hich the 
feathered tribes resorted, or the caves and rocks 
to which the curlew and cormorant retired to 
protect themselves from the fury of the tempest. 
In these words, recorded by himself, we read the 
first chapter of the life history of John James 
Audubon, the American naturalist and the author 
of one of the early classics of American literature. 
In those early days his father was Audubon's 
teacher, and hand in hand they searched the 
groves for new specimens, or lingered over the 
nests where lay the helpless young. It was his 
father who taught him to look upon the shining 
eggs as * flowers in the bud,' and to note the dif- 
ferent characteristics which distinguished them. 
These excursions were seasons of joy, but when 
the 'time came for the birds to take their annual 
departure the joy was turned to sorrow. To the 
young naturalist a dead bird, though beautifully 



l6 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 

preserved and mounted, gave no pleasure. It 
seemed but a mockery of life, and the constant 
care needed to keep the specimens in good con- 
dition brought an additional sense of loss. Was 
there no way in which the memory of these 
feathered friends might be kept fresh and beau- 
tiful ? He writes that he turned in his anxiety 
to his father, who in answer laid before him a 
volume of illustrations. Audubon turned over 
the leaves with a new hope in his heart, and 
although the pictures were badly executed the 
idea satisfied him. Although he was unconscious 
of it, it was the moment of the birth of his own 
great life work. Pencil in hand he began to 
copy nature untiringly, although for a long time 
he produced what he himself called but a family 
of cripples, the sketches being burned regularly 
on his birthdays. But no failure could stop him. 
He made hundreds of sketches of birds every 
year, worthless almost in themselves because of 
bad drawing, but valuable as studies of nature. 

Meantime for education the boy had been 
taken from Louisiana to France, the home of 
his father, who wished him to become a soldier, 



JOHN JAMES AUDUBON IJ 

sailor, or engineer. For a few hours daily Audu- 
bon studied mathematics, drawing, and geog- 
raphy, and then would disappear in the coun- 
try, returning with eggs, nests, or curious plants. 
His rooms looked like a museum of natural his- 
tory, while the walls were covered with drawings 
of French birds. 

Learning mathematics with difficulty Audu- 
bon became easily proficient in fencing and 
dancing, and learned to play upon the violin, 
flute, flageolet, and guitar. His drawing lessons 
were his greatest delight, the great French artist, 
David, being his teacher and critic. Once, on 
the elder Audubon's return from a long sea-voy- 
age, he was chagrined to find that although his 
son had probably the largest amateur natural-his- 
tory collection in France, he had neglected his 
equations, angles, and triangles, and the lad was 
sent to his father's station, given one day to visit 
the ships and fortifications, and then set to the 
study of mathematics, and mathematics only. 

For one year he wrestled with problems and 
theorems, counting himself happy if by any 
chance he could fly to the country for an hour to 



1 8 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 

take up his acquaintance with the birds ; and 
then the father admitted his son's unfitness for 
miHtary pursuits and sent him to America to 
take charge of some property. 

Audubon was then seventeen years of age, 
and had but one ambition in life — to Hve in the 
woods with his wild friends. As his father's es- 
tate was rented by a very orderly minded Quaker 
there was little for Audubon to do except enjoy 
himself. Hunting, fishing, drawing, and study- 
ing English from a young English girl he af- 
terward married, filled the day, while he never 
missed the balls and skating parties for which 
the neighborhood was famous. He was the best 
marksman in the region, able to bring down his 
quarry while riding at full speed. He was the 
best skater to be found ; at balls and parties he 
was the amateur master of ceremonies, gayly 
teaching the newest steps and turns that obtained 
in France. In the hunt it was Audubon — dressed, 
perhaps, in satin breeches and pumps, for he was 
a great dandy — who led the way through the al- 
most unbroken wilderness. Add to this that he 
was an expert swimmer, once swimming the 



JOHN JAMES AUDUBON I9 

Schuylkill with a companion on his back ; that 
he could play any one of half a dozen instru- 
ments for an impromptu dance ; that he could 
plait a set of picnic dishes out of willow rushes ; 
train dogs, and do a hundred other clever things, 
and it is easy to see why he was a general fa- 
vorite. 

His private rooms were turned into a museum. 
The walls were covered with festoons of birds' 
eggs, the shelves crowded with fishes, snakes, 
lizards, and frogs.; the chimney displayed stuffed 
squirrels and opossums, and wherever there was 
room hung his own paintings of birds. It was 
the holiday of life for the young lover of nature, 
and he enjoyed it with good will. 

tiere the idea of his great work came to him 
as he was one day looking over his drawings and 
descriptions of birds. Suddenly, as it seemed to 
him, though his whole life had led to it, he con- 
ceived the plan of a great work on American 
ornithology. He began his gigantic undertak- 
ing as a master in the school of nature wherein 
he had been so faithful a student, for he now 
saw with joy that the past, which had often 



20 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 

seemed idle, had been in reality rich with labors 
that were to bear fruit. 

He began at once to put his work into scien- 
tific form, and nothing better illustrates his ener- 
gy and ambition than the fact that he entered on 
it alone and unaided, though none knew better 
than he the toil and ceaseless endeavor necessary 
for its completion. Except in a very immature 
form, American ornithology at that time did not 
exist ; it was a region almost as unknown to hu- 
man thought as the new world which Colum- 
bus discovered. Season after season, from the 
Gulf to Canada and back again, these winged 
creatures of the air wended their way, stopping 
to hatch and breed their young, becoming ac- 
quainted with Louisiana orange-groves and New 
England apple - orchards, now fluttering with 
kindly sociability round the dwellings of men 
and again seeking lonely eeries among inacces- 
sible mountain tops, pursuing their course at all 
times almost without the thought and cognizance 
of man. It was Audubon who was the con- 
queror, if not the discoverer of this aerial world 
of sons:, of which he became the immortal his- 



JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 21 

torian. It was his untiring zeal which gave thus 
early to American literature a scientific work of 
such vast magnitude and importance that it as- 
tonished the scientists of Europe and won for 
itself the fame of being the most gigantic bibli- 
cal enterprise ever undertaken by a single indi- 
vidual. To do this meant a hfe of almost con- 
stant change, and Audubon can hardly have had 
an abiding place after his first serious beginning. 
The wide continent became his home and he 
found his dwelling wherever the winged tribes 
soup^ht shelter from the wind and storm. His 
pursuit was often interrupted by occupations 
necessary for the support of his family, for at 
his father's death he had given to his sister his 
share of the estate and so became entirely de- 
pendent upon his own efforts for a livelihood ; 
but at all times, no matter what his situation, his 
heart was in the wild retreats of nature. Trav- 
elling through the West and South in search 
of fortune as well as of specimens his experi- 
ences were often disenchanting. At Louisville 
and New Orleans he would be forced to make 
crayon portraits of the principal citizens in order 



22 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 

to raise the money for family expenses. Again 
he taught drawing; he served as tutor in pri- 
vate famihes, and in order to secure funds for 
the publication of his work he earned $2,000 
by dancing lessons, the largest sum he had 
ever earned. Many business speculations en- 
listed Audubon's hopes, but all failed utterly. 
Once he embarked his money in a steam mill, 
which, being built in an unfit place, soon failed. 
At another time he bought a steamboat, which, 
proving an unlucky speculation, was sold to a 
shrewd buyer who never paid the purchase 
money. Again he was cheated in the clearing 
of a tract of timber. But his studies in natural 
history always went on. When he had no money 
to pay his passage up the Mississippi he bar- 
gained to draw the portrait of the captain of the 
steamer and his wife as remuneration. When 
he needed boots he obtained them by sketching 
the features of a friendly shoemaker, and more 
than once he paid his hotel bills, and saved some- 
thing besides, by sketching the faces of the host 
and his family. 

On the other hand, his adventures in search 



JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 23 

of material for his work were romantic enough 
to satisfy the most ambitious traveller. From 
Florida to Labrador, and from the Atlantic to 
the then unknown regions of the Yellowstone he 
pursued his way, often alone, and not seldom 
in the midst of dangers which threatened life 
itself. He hunted buffalo with the Indians of 
the Great Plains, and lived for months in the 
tents of the fierce Sioux. He spent a season 
in the winter camp of the Shawnees, sleeping, 
wrapped in a buffalo robe, before the great 
camp-fire, and living upon wild turkey, bear's 
grease, and opossums. He made studies of 
deer, bears, and cougars, as well as of wild 
turkeys, prairie hens, and other birds. For days 
he drifted down the Ohio in a flat-bottomed 
boat, searching the uninhabited shores for speci- 
mens, and living the life of the frontiersman 
whose daily food must be supplied by his own 
exertions. Sometimes his studies would take 
him far into the dense forests of the West, where 
the white man had never before trod, and the 
only thing that suggested humanity would be 
the smoke rising miles away from the evening 



24 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 

camp-fire of some Indian hunter as lonely as 
himself. 

Once as he lay stretched on the deck of a 
small vessel ascending the Mississippi he caught 
sight of a great eagle circling about his head. 
Convinced that it was a new species, he waited 
patiently for two years before he again had a 
glimpse of it, flying, in lazy freedom, above some 
butting crags where its young were nested. 
Climbing to the place, and watching like an 
Indian in ambush until it dropped to its nest, 
Audubon found it to be a sea-eagle. He named 
it the Washington Sea Eagle, in honor of George 
Washington. Waiting two years longer, he was 
able to obtain a specimen, from which he made 
the picture given in his work. This is but one 
example of the tireless patience with which he 
prosecuted his studies, years of waiting counting 
as nothing if he could but gain his end. 

Some of his discoveries in this kingdom of 
the birds he relates with a romantic enthusiasm. 
Throughout the entire work there runs the note 
of warmest sympathy with the lives of these 
creatures of the air and sunshine. He tells us 



JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 25 

of their hopes and loves and interests, from the 
time of the nest -making till the young have 
flown away. The freedom of bird life, its hap- 
piness, its experiences, and tragedies appeal to 
him as do those of humanity. The discovery of 
a new species is reported as rapturously as the 
news of a new star. Once in Labrador, when 
he was making studies of the eggers, his son 
brought to him a great hawk captured on the 
precipice far above his head. To Audubon's 
delight, it was that rare specimen, the gerfalcon, 
which had heretofore eluded all efforts of natu- 
ralists. While the rain dripped down from the 
rigging above, Audubon sat for hours making a 
sketch of this bird and feeling as rich as if he 
had discovered some rare gem. 

After twenty years the work was published. 
Every specimen, from the tiny humming-bird 
to the largest eagles and vultures, was sketched 
life size and colored in the tints of nature. 
There were four hundred and seventy-live of 
these plates, furnishing a complete history of 
the feathered tribes of North America, for they 
showed not only the appearance of the birds but 



26 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 

represented also the manners and home Hfe of 
this world of song. The humming-bird poised 
before the crimson throat of the trumpet flower, 
the whippoorwill resting among the leaves of the 
oak, the bobolink singing among the crimson 
flowers of the swamp maples, the snow-bird 
chirping cheerily among the snow-touched ber- 
ries of the holly, were not sketches merely but 
bits of story out of bird history. So also are 
those pictures of the swan among the reeds of 
the Great Lakes, of the great white heron seiz- 
ing its prey from the waters of the Gulf, and of 
the golden eagle winging its way toward the 
distant heights that it inhabits. 

The work was published by subscription in 
London in 1829 under the title, *'The Birds of 
North America." The price was eighty guineas. 
Later on a smaller and cheaper edition was issued. 
The work now is very rare. Audubon had the 
gratification of knowing that his labors were un- 
derstood and appreciated by the world of science. 
When he exhibited his plates in the galleries of 
England and France, whither he went to obtain 
subscriptions, crowds flocked to see them, and 



JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 



the greatest scientists of the age welcomed him 
to their ranks. The Birds of America was 
his greatest work, though he was interested 
somewhat in general zoology and wrote on 
other subjects. 

Audubon died in New York in 1851. The 
great zoologist Cuvier called The Birds of 
North America the most magnificent monu- 
ment that art has ever erected to ornithology. 
The Scotch naturalist Wilson said that the char- 
acter of Audubon was just what might have 
been expected from the author of such a work, 
brave, enthusiastic, self-sacrificing, and capable 
of heroic endurance. 



CHAPTER III 

WASHINGTON IRVING 

1783-1S59 

*' Left his lodging some time ago and has not 
been heard of since, a small elderly gentleman, 
dressed in an old black coat and cocked hat, by 
the name of Knickerbocker. . . . Any infor- 
mation concerning him will be thankfully re- 
ceived. " 

Such was the curious advertisement that ap- 
peared in the Evening Post under the date of 
October 26, 1809, attracting the attention of all 
New York. People read it as they sat at sup- 
per, talked of it afterward around their wood 
fires, and thought of it again and again before 
they fell asleep at night. And yet not a soul 
knew the missing old gentleman or had ever 
heard of him before. Still he was no stranger 
to them, for he was a Knickerbocker, and every- 



WASHINGTON IRVING 



one was interested in the Knickerbockers, and 
everyone felt almost as if a grandfather or great- 
grandfather had suddenly come back to life and 
disappeared again still more suddenly without a 
word of explanation. 

Those who could remember their childhood 
sent their wits back into the past and gathered 
up memories of these old Knickerbockers. 
They saw the old burghers again walking through 
the streets dressed in their long-waisted coats 
with skirts reaching nearly to the ankles, and 
wearing so solemnly their low-crowned beaver 
hats, while their small swords dangled by their 
sides to show their importance. They saw their 
wives in their close-fitting muslin caps, with their 
dress-skirts left open to show their numerous 
petticoats of every color, their gay stockings, and 
their low-cut, high-heeled shoes. They entered 
the quaint gabled houses made of brick brought 
from Holland, and sat in the roomy kitchen 
whose floor had just been sprinkled with sand 
brought from Coney Island, and on whose walls 
hung deer antlers and innumerable Dutch pipes. 
They passed into the parlor, whose chief orna- 



30 WASHINGTON IRVING 

ment was the carved bedstead upon which re- 
posed two great feather-beds covered with a 
patch-work quilt. They sat in the fireplace and 
drank from the huge silver tankard while listen- 
ing to stories of Indian warfare. In the streets 
they saw groups of Indians standing before the 
shop windows, and passed by the walls of the 
old fort wherein cows, pigs, and horses were 
feeding. They noticed the queerly rigged ships 
in the bay, the windmills scattered everywhere, 
and the canal passing right through the town 
and filled with Dutch canal boats. They saw 
the Dutch maidens standing around the ponds 
washing the family linen, and visited the bowerie 
or country house of some honest burgher, and 
sat with him in his little garden where cabbages 
and roses flourished side by side. 

Such were the scenes that the strange adver- 
tisement called up, and more than one New 
Yorker dreamed that night that he was a child 
again, living over those long past days. 

For some time nothing was heard of Diedrich 
Knickerbocker, and then another advertisement 
appeared in the Post saying he had been seen 



WASHINGTON IRVING 3 1 

twice on the road to Albany. Some time again 
elapsed, and finally the paper stated that the 
landlord of the inn at which he stopped gave 
up hope of ever seeing his guest again, and de- 
clared that he should sell the manuscript of a 
book that Mr. Knickerbocker had left behind 
and take the proceeds in payment of his bill. 
People were really excited about the fate of 
the old gentleman, and one of the city officials 
was upon the point of offering a reward for his 
discovery when a curious thing happened. It 
was found that there was no old gentleman by 
the name of Knickerbocker who had wandered 
away from his lodging ; that there was no inn 
at which he had lived, and no manuscript he 
had left behind, and that in fact, Mr. Knicker- 
bocker was simply the hero of a book which 
the author had taken this clever means of ad- 
vertising. The book claimed to be the true 
history of the discovery and settlement of New 
York, and began with an account of the creation 
of the world, passing on to the manners, customs, 
and historical achievements of the old Hollanders 
from their first voyage in the celebrated ark the 



32 WASHINGTON IRVING 

Good Vrow, to the shores of New Jersey. Here 
we read how, as the Indians were given to long 
talks and the Dutch to long silences, they had 
no trouble about the settlement of the land, but 
all lived peacefully together. How Oloffe Van 
Kortlandt took his perilous journey from New 
Jersey as far north as Harlem and decided to 
build a city on Manhattan Island. Then we 
read of the golden reign of the first Dutch 
governor, Wouter Van Twiller, who was exactly 
five feet six inches in height, and six feet five 
inches in circumference, and who ate four hours 
a day, smoked eight, and slept twelve, and so 
administered the affairs of the colony that it was a 
marvel of prosperity. Next we hear of Governor 
Keift, of lofty descent, since his father was an 
inspector of windmills — how his nose turned up 
and his mouth turned down, how his legs were 
the size of spindles, and how he grew tougher 
and tougher with age so that before his death 
he looked a veritable mummy. And then we 
see the redoubtable Peter Stuyvesant stumping 
around on his wooden leg adorned with silver 
reliefs and follow him in his expedition against 



WASHINGTON IRVING 33 

the neighboring Swedish colonies, when the 
entire population of the city thronged the streets 
and balconies to wave farewell to him as he left, 
and to welcome his return as a victorious con- 
queror. Lastly we see him, furious with rage, 
menacing the British fleet which has come to 
take possession of the town, threatening ven- 
geance dire upon the English king, and still 
cherishing his wrath with fiery bravery v/hen the 
enemy finally occupy the old Dutch town and 
proceed to transform it into an English city. 
The book was read with interest, admiration, or 
amazement as the case might be. Some said it 
appeared too light and amusing for real history, 
others claimed that it held stores of wisdom that 
only the wise could understand ; others still com- 
plained that the author was no doubt making 
fun of their respectable ancestors and had written 
the book merely to hold them up to ridicule. 
Only a few saw that it v/as the brightest, clever- 
est piece of humor that had yet appeared in 
America, and that its writer had probably a 
career of fame before him. 

The author was Washington Irving, then a 

3 



34 WASHINGTON IRVING 

young man in his twenty - seventh year and 
already known as the writer of some clever 
newspaper letters, and of a series of humorous 
essays published in a semi - monthly periodical 
called Salniagiindi. 

Irving vv^as born in New York on April 3, 
1 783, and was named after George Washington. 
The Revolution was over, but the treaty of peace 
had not yet been signed, and the British army 
still remained in the city, which had been half 
burned down during the war. 

New York was then a small town, with a pop- 
ulation of about one seven-hundredth of what 
it now has ; beyond the town limits were orchards, 
farms, country houses, and the high road leading 
to Albany, along which the stage coach passed 
at regular times. There were no railroads, and 
Irving was fourteen years old before the first 
steam-boat puffed its way up the Hudson River, 
frightening the country people into the belief 
that it was an evil monster come to devour them. 
All travelling was done by means of sailing ves- 
sels, stage coaches, or private conveyances ; all 
letters were carried by the stage-coach, and every 



WASHINGTON IRVING 35 

one cost the sender or receiver twenty-five cents 
for postage. The telegraph was undreamed of, 
and if any one had hinted the possibihty of talk- 
ing to some one else a thousand miles away over 
a telephone wire he would have been considered 
a lunatic, or possibly a witch. In fact New York 
was a quiet, unpretentious little town, whose in- 
habitants were still divided into English or Dutch 
families according to their descent, and in whose 
households were found the customs of England 
and Holland in full force. In Irving's family, 
however, there was doubtless greater severity 
practised in daily life than in the neighboring 
households. The father was a Scotch Presbyte- 
rian who considered life a discipline, who thought 
all amusement a waste of precious time, and who 
made the children devote one out of the two half 
weekly holidays to the study of the catechism. 
They were also obliged to attend church three 
times every Sunday, and to spend any spare 
moments left in reading some religious book, a 
discipline which had such an effect upon Irving 
that, to avoid becoming a Presbyterian, he went 
secretly to Trinity Church and was confirmed. 



36 WASHINGTON IRVING 

Naturally Irving s love of fun was sedulously hid 
from such a father, and, as fun he must have, he 
sought amusement outside his own home. For- 
bidden to attend the theatre, he would risk his 
neck nightly by climbing out of his window to 
visit the play for an hour or so, and then rush 
home in terror lest his absence had been dis- 
covered and his future fun imperilled. Many a 
night when sent early to bed he would steal away 
across the adjacent roofs to send a handful of 
stones clattering down the wide, old-fashioned 
chimney of some innocent neighbor, who would 
start from his dreams to imagine robbers, spooks, 
or other unpleasant visitors in his bed-chamber ; 
and often when Irving was supposed to be fast 
asleep he was far away in the midst of a group of 
truant boys concocting soine scheme of mischief 
which was meant to startle the neighborhood and 
bring no end of fun to the daring perpetrators. 
Irving went to school kept by an old Revolu- 
tionary soldier, with whom he was a great favorite 
and who always called him General, He was 
not particularly btilliant in his studies, but he 
distinguished himself as an actor in the tragedies 



WASHINGTON IRVING 37 

which the boys gave at times in the school-room ; 
at ten years of age he was the star of the com- 
pany, which did not even lose respect for him 
when once, being called suddenly upon the stage 
through a mistake, he appeared with his mouth 
full of honey-cake, which he was obliged to swal- 
low painfully while the audience roared at the 
situation. Afterward, when he rushed around 
the stage flourishing a wooden sabre, he was not 
a tragedian to be trifled with. The glory of it 
even paid him for the cruelty of having to run 
away to see a real play. 

It was a favorite amusement with him after 
school to wander down to the wharves, where 
he would spend hours in watching the ships 
load and unload, and dream of the day when 
he, too, should visit those beautiful regions that 
lay only in reach of their white sails ; for, fond 
as he was of boyish sports, he was much given 
to day-dreams, and the romantic past of the old 
world held a great charm for him. His favorite 
books were '' Robinson Crusoe," '' The Arabian 
Nights," *' Gulliver's Travels," and all stories of 
adventure and travel. The world beyond the sea 



38 WASHINGTON IRVING 



seemed a fairyland to him ; a little print of Lon- 
don Bridge and another of Kensington Gardens, 
that hung up in his bed-room, stirred his heart 
wistfully, and he fairly envied the odd-looking 
old gentlemen and ladies who appeared to be 
loitering around the arches of St. John's Gate, as 
shown in a cut on the cover of an old maga- 
zine. 

Later his imagination was also kindled by 
short excursions to the then wild regions of the 
Hudson and Mohawk valleys. Drifting up the 
Hudson in a little sloop, day after day the pictu- 
resque beauty of the Highlands and Catskills 
impressed itself more deeply upon him, while his 
mind dwelt fondly upon the traditions which still 
lingered around the mountains and rivers forever 
associated with the struggles of the early settlers. 
Years afterward we find the remembrance of 
these days gracing with loving touch the pages 
of some of his choicest work, and it is this power 
of sympathy, so early aroused, that gives Irving 
one of his greatest charms as a writer, and makes 
the period of which he writes seem as real as if a 
part of to-day. 



WASHINGTON IRVING 39 

At seventeen Irving left school and began to 
study for the bar. But his health, which had 
always been delicate, made it necessary for him 
to take a long rest from study, and he accordingly 
left America for two years of travel abroad. He 
visited England, France, and Italy, taking great 
delight in seeing those lands he had so often 
dreamed of, in meeting the fam^ous people of the 
day, and, above all, in indulging in frequent visits 
to the theatre and opera, becoming in this way 
acquainted with all the great singers and actors 
whose reputation had reached America. It was 
after his return home that he brought out his 
Knickerbocker history, a work which made him 
so famous that when he returned to England 
some time afterward he found himself very well 
known in the best literary circles. The results 
of this second visit are found in the volumes com- 
prising Geoffrey Crayons Sketch Book, Brace- 
bridge Hall, Tales of a Traveller and other 
miscellany, in which occur charming descriptions 
of English country life, delightful ghost stories, 
the famous description of an English Christmas, 
the immortal legend of Rip Van Winkle, 



40 WASHINGTON IRVING 

and an account of a visit to the haunts of 
Robin Hood, whose exploits had so fascinated 
him as a boy that he once spent his entire holiday 
money to obtain a copy of his adventures. 

Abbotsfoi'd is an account of a visit that Ir- 
ving paid to Sir Walter Scott. It is a charming 
revelation of the social side of Scott's charac- 
ter, who welcomed Irving as a younger brother 
in art, became his guide in his visit to Yarrow 
and Melrose Abbey, and took long rambling 
walks with him all around the country made so 
famous by the great novelist. Irving recalled as 
among the most delightful hours of his life those 
walks over the Scottish hills with Scott, who 
w^as described by the peasantry as having " an 
awfu' knowledge of history," and whose talk 
was full of the folk-lore, poetry, and superstitions 
that made up the interest of the place. 

In the evening they sat in the drawing-room, 
while Scott, with a great hound, Maida, at his 
feet, read to them a scrap of old poetry or a 
chapter from King Arthur, or told some delight- 
ful bit of pea»sant fairy lore, like that of the black 
cat who, on hearing one shepherd tell another of 



WASHINGTON IRVING 4 1 

having seen a number of cats dressed in mourn- 
ing following a coffin, sprang up the chimney in 
haste, exclaiming : " Then I am king of the cats," 
and vanished to take possession of his vacant 
kingdom. From this time Irving's life was one 
of constant literary labor for many years, all of 
which were spent abroad. His works on the 
companions of Columbus, and the Alhambra, 
were written during his residence in Spain, 
where he had access to the national archives and 
where he became as familiar with the life of the 
people as it was possible for a stranger to become. 
He was at home both in the dignified circles of 
higher life and among the picturesque and simple 
peasantry, whose characteristics he draws with 
such loving grace. 

After seventeen years' absence Irving returned 
to America, where he was welcomed as one who 
had won for his country great honors. He was the 
first writer to make American literature respected 
abroad, and his return was made the occasion of 
numerous fetes given in his honor in New York 
and other cities. He now built Sunnyside, on the 
Hudson, the home that he loved so dearly and 



42 WASHINGTON IRVING 

that will ever be famous as the abode of Ameri- 
ca's first great writer. 

His principal works following the Spanish 
histories were Astoria, the history of the fur- 
trading company in Oregon founded by the head 
of the Astor family ; Captain Bonneville, the ad- 
ventures of a hunter in the far West ; the Life 
of Goldsmith and the Lives of Mahomet and 
Llis Successors, 

He returned to Spain in 1842 as ambassador, 
and remained four years. In the Legends of 
the Conqitest of Spain Irving tells the story of 
the conquest of Spain by the Moors, as related 
in the old Spanish and Moorish chronicles. The 
pages are full of the spirit of the warfare of the 
middle ages. Here we see the great Arab chief- 
tain, Taric, the one-eyed, with a handful of men 
cruising along the Spanish coast to spy out its 
strength and weakness, and finally making a bold 
dash inland to capture and despoil a city and 
return to Africa laden with plunder to report 
the richness of the land. " Behold ! " writes 
Taric's chief in a letter to the Caliph, " a land 
that equals Syria in its soil, Arabia in its tem- 



WASHINGTON IRVING 43 



pcrature, India in its flowers and spices, and 
Cathay in its precious stones." 

And at this news the Caliph wrote back in 
haste that God was great, and that it w^as evidently 
his will that the infidel should perish, and bade 
the Moors go forward and conquer. 

In these delightful chapters Vv^'e follow Taric 
in his conquests from the taking of the rock of 
Calpe, henceforth called from him Gibraltar, the 
rock of Taric, to the final overthrow of the 
Christians and the establishment of the Moorish 
supremacy in Spain. 

The whole story is a brilliant, living picture 
of that romantic age. The Spanish king goes 
to battle wearing robes of gold brocade, sandals 
embroidered with gold and diamonds, and a crown 
studded with the costliest jewels of Spain. He 
rides in a chariot of ivory, and a thousand cava- 
liers knighted by his own hand surround him, 
while tens of thousands of his brave soldiers 
follow^ him, guarding the sacred banners em- 
blazoned with the cross. The Moorish vanguard, 
ridinof the famous horses of Arabia, advance to 
the sound of trumpet and cymbal, their gay robes 



44 WASHINGTON IRVING 

and snowy turbans and their arms of burnished 
gold and steel glittering in the sunshine, v/hich 
reflects in every direction the sacred crescent, the 
symbol of their faith. The surroundings are 
equally picturesque and romantic. The famous 
plain of Granada, adorned with groves and gar- 
dens and winding streams, and guarded by the 
famous Mountains of the Sun and Air, forms 
the foreground to the picture, while in the dis- 
tance we see the gloomy mountain passes, the 
fortified rocks and castles, and the great walled 
cities, through which the Moors passed, always 
victorious and never pausing until their banners 
floated from every cliff and tower. 

Scattered through the narrative of battles and 
sieges we find also many legends that abounded 
at that time both in the Moslem and Christian 
faiths, translated with such fidelity from the 
old chroniclers that they retain all the super- 
natural flavor of the original. Here we learn 
how Arab and Christian alike beheld portents, 
saw visions, received messages from the spirits, 
and were advised, encouraged, and comforted by 
signs and warnings from heaven, the whole nar- 



WASHINGTON IRVING 45 

rative being most valuable as presenting in fine 
literary form the e very-day life and intense relig- 
ious fervor of the soldier of the middle ages. 

For eight hundred years the Moors held Spain. 
They built beautiful cities and palaces, the re- 
mains of which are marvels to this day ; they 
made the plain of Granada a garden of flowers ; 
they preserved classical literature when the 
rest of Europe v/as sunk in ignorance ; they 
studied the sciences, and had great and famous 
schools, which were attended by the youth of all 
nations ; they rescued the Jewish people from 
the oppression of the Spaniards, and made them 
honorable citizens ; and they impressed upon 
their surroundings an art so beautiful that its in- 
fluence has extended throughout Christendom. 
Their occupation of Spain at that time prob- 
ably did more for the preservation of literature, 
science, and art than any other event in history. 

In his chapters on the Alhambra, the beauties 
of that celebrated palace, the favorite abode of 
the Moorish kings, is described by Irving as 
seen by him during a visit in 1829. Even at 
that date, nearly four hundred years after its 



46 WASHINGTON IRVING 

seizure by the Spaniards, the Alhambra retained 
much of its original magnificence. The great 
courts, with their pavements of white marble, 
and fountains bordered with roses, the archways, 
balconies, and halls decorated with fretwork and 
filigree and incrusted with tiles of the most ex- 
quisite design ; the gilded cupolas and panels of 
lapis lazuli, and the carved lions supporting the 
alabaster basins of the fountains, all appealed 
to Irving so strongly that wdien he first entered 
the palace it seemed, he relates, as if he had been 
transported into the past and was living in an 
enchanted realm. 

Irving remained some months in the Alham- 
bra, livino: over ao-ain the scenes of Moorish 
story, and so catching the spirit of the lost gran- 
deur of the old palace, that his descriptions read 
like a bit of genuine Arabian chronicle, which 
had been kept safe until then in the grim guar- 
dianship of the past. 

The chapters of the Alhambra are also full of 
delightful legends, the fairy tales which time had 
woven around the beautiful ruin, and which the 
custodians of the place related gravely to Irving 



WASHINGTON IRVING 47 

as genuine history. It calls up a pleasant pict- 
ure to think of Irving sitting in the stately hall 
or in his balcony, listening to one of these old 
tales from the lips of his tattered but devoted 
domestic, while the twilight was gathering and 
the nightingale singing in the groves and gar- 
dens beneath. 

He himself said that it was the realization of 
a day-dream which he had cherished since the 
time when, in earliest boyhood on the banks of 
the Hudson, he had pored over the story of 
Granada. 

In his work, The Conquest of Granada, Irving 
relates the story of the retaking of Granada 
by Ferdinand and Isabella, during a war which 
lasted ten years and which held nothing but 
disaster for the Moors. Ferdinand and Isabella 
took the field with an army composed of the 
nobles of Spain and their followers, and which 
represented the chivalry of Europe, for all Chris- 
tendom hastened to espouse the holy cause of 
driving the infidel from the land. The Spanish 
camps glittered with the burnished armor and 
gold-embroidered banners of foreign knights ; 



48 WASHINGTON IRVING 

and whether on the march, in the field, or in 
camp, the whole pageant of the war as depicted 
by Irving passes before our eyes^ like a brilliant 
panorama. We see the Moorish king looking 
down from the towers of the Alhambra upon 
the plains once green and blooming but now 
desolate with fire and sword by the hand of 
Ferdinand. We follow the Moors as they rush 
from their walls in one of their splendid but 
hopeless sallies, to return discomfited, and hear 
the wail of the women and old men — " Woe ! 
woe ! to Granada, for its strong men shall fall 
by the sword and its maidens be led into cap- 
tivity." We watch the Spaniards, tireless in 
endeavor, building the fortified city of Santa 
Fe, the city of holy faith, to take the place of 
the camp destroyed by fire, and which has re- 
mained famous as the place where Columbus 
received from Isabella his commission to sail 
westward until India was reached. And in the 
end we see the Moors in their retreat looking 
sadly from the hill which is called to this day, 
The Last Sigh of the Moor, upon the beauti- 
ful valley and mountains lost to them forever. 



WASHINGTON IRVING 49 

So graphically is the scene described that Irving 
must ever remain the historian of the Moors of 
Spain, whose spirit seemed to inspire the beau- 
tiful words in which he celebrated their con- 
quests, their achievements, and their defeats. 

A favorite among Irving's books was the Life 
of Washington, based upon the correspondence 
of the great statesman. It is an appreciative 
story of the life work of Washington, written 
by one whose own work connected the past 
and present, and who, as a child, had felt the 
hand of the nation's hero laid upon his head in 
blessing. 

In the Chronicle of Wolferfs Roost Irving 
follows in imagination old Diedrich Knicker- 
bocker into the famous region of Sleepy Hollow, 
where much of the material for the celebrated 
Knickerbocker's History was said to have been 
collected. This chronicle, it was claimed, was 
written upon the identical old Dutch writing 
desk that Diedrich used ; the elbow chair was 
the same that he sat in ; the clock was the very 
one he consulted so often during his long hours 
of composition. In these pages old Diedrich 



so WASHINGTON IRVING 



walks as a real person and Irving follows him 
with faithful step through the region that he 
loved so fondly all his life. 

Everything here is dwelt upon with lingering 
touch ; the brooks and streams, the meadows 
and cornfields, the orchards and gardens, and 
the groves of beech and chestnut have each 
their tribute from the pen of one who found 
their charms ever fresh, who sought in them rest 
and happiness, and who came back to them 
lovingly to spend the last days of his life in 
their familiar companionship. 

Irving died in 1859 ^^^^ ^^^^ buried at Sunn}^- 
side, in sight of the Hudson whose legends he 
had immortalized and whose beauty never 
ceased to charm him from the moment it first 
captivated his heart in his boyhood days. 



CHAPTER IV 

JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 

1789-1S51 

The region of Otsego Lake, New York, was 
at the last of the eighteenth century a wilderness. 
Here and there rose a little clearing, the birth- 
place of a future village, but westward the pri- 
meval forest extended for miles around the little 
lake, which reflected the shadows of wooded 
hills on every side. Here roved deer, wolves, 
panthers, and bears unmolested in the green 
depths and following the same runways which 
their species had trodden for centuries. Here 
also lurked the red man, suspicious and cautious 
and ever ready to revenge on the white man the 
wrongs of his race. 

In this beautiful spot lived the boy, James 
Fenimore Cooper, in the family mansion built 
by his father and named Otsego Hall, the start- 



52 JAMES FENTMORE COOPER 

ing point of the now famous village of Coopers- 
town. It was a fitting home for the boy who 
was hereafter to immortahze the Indian race in 
the pages of fiction. His life was almost as 
simple as that of the Indian lads who roamed 
through the forest fishing and hunting and know- 
ing no ambition beyond. 

The little hamlet lay far away from the high- 
ways of travel. The nearest villages were miles 
distant and only to be reached on foot or on 
horseback through miles of unbroken forest. A 
visitor was rare, and meant perhaps a warning 
that the Indians were on the war-path. Oc- 
casionally a new settler drifted into the little 
valley, and the village grew slowly through the 
lad's boyhood, Otsego Hall keeping its dignity 
as the Manor House. Sometimes a visitor of 
note brought news of the great political troubles 
in Europe, and thus Cooper met many men of 
distinction whose visits seemed to bring the 
great world very close to the little settlement. 
This glimpse of a broader life, v/ith attendance 
at the village school and an intimate companion- 
ship with nature, made up his early education. 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 53 

It was not bad training for the future novelist. 
The acquaintanceship of celebrated men widened 
his horizon and fed his imagination ; his daily 
life kept his mind fresh and active with the 
spirit that was fast turning the uninhabited 
regions of the frontier into busy settlements ; 
and the familiar intercourse with nature kept 
pure the springs of poetry that lie in every 
child's heart. He learned wood-lore as the young 
Indian learned it, face to face with the divinities 
of the forest. He knew the calls of the wild 
animals far across the gloomy wilderness. He 
could follow the deer and bear to their secluded 
haunts. He could retrace the path of the re- 
treating wolf by the broken cobwebs glistening 
in the early sunlight ; and the cry of the panther 
high overhead in the pines and hemlocks was a 
speech as familiar as his own tongue. When he 
was thirsty he made a hunter's cup of leaves and 
drank in the Indian fashion. When fatigued he 
lay down to rest with that sense of security that 
comes only to the forest bred. When thought- 
ful he could learn from the lap of the waves 
against the shore, the murmur of leaves, and the 



54 JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 



rustle of wings, those lessons which nature 
teaches in her quiet moods. 

These experiences and impressions sank into 
Cooper's heart, and were re-lived again long after 
in the pages of his romances. 

While still a boy Cooper went to Albany to 
study, and in 1803 entered Yale College, at the 
age of thirteen. 

He played as much and studied as little as he 
possibly could, and the first year's preparation 
perhaps accounts for his dismissal from college 
in his junior year. This in turn led to a life 
much more to his liking. His father took his 
part in the trouble at Yale, but was now anxious 
to see his son embarked on the serious business 
of life. Both father and son liked the idea of a 
naval career for the boy, and it was decided that 
Cooper should go to sea. He left New York 
in the autumn of 1806 on a vessel of the mer- 
chant marine. There was then no Naval Acade- 
my in America, and a boy could fit himself for 
entering the navy as an officer only by serving 
before the mast. Cooper was away nearly a year, 
his ship, the Sterling, visiting London, Portu- 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 55 

gal, and Spain, carrying cargoes from one port to 
another in the leisurely manner of the merchant 
sailing-vessels of that clay. It was a time of 
peculiar interest to all seamen, and his mind was 
keenly ahve to the new life around him. The 
English were expecting a French invasion, and 
the Channel was full of ships of war, while every 
southern port was arming for defence. The 
Mediterranean was terrorized by the Barbary 
pirates, who, under cover of night, descended 
upon any unprotected merchant vessel, stole 
the cargo, scuttled the ship, and sold the crew 
into slavery, to Tripolitan and Algerine hus- 
bandmen, whose orchards of date and fig were 
cultivated by many an American or English 
slave. 

Cooper saw all this and remembered it, being 
even then a student of men and events. His 
work was hard and dangerous ; he was never ad- 
mitted to the cabin of the ship ; in storm or 
wind his place was on the deck among the rough 
sailors, who were his only companions. But 
this training developed the good material that 
was in him, and when in 1808 he received his 



56 JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 

commission as midshipman he was well equip- 
ped for his duties. 

Cooper remained in the navy three years and 
a half. He spent part of this time at the port 
of Oswego, Lake Ontario, superintending the 
building of a war vessel, the Oneida, intended 
for the defence of the Canadian frontier in case 
of a war with England. The days passed in 
this wild region were not fruitless, for here in 
the solitude of the primeval forest Cooper found 
later the background of a famous story. It was 
the land of the red man, and during the long 
winter months of his residence there Cooper 
dwelt in spirit with the wild natives, though he 
little dreamed that he was to be the historian 
that would give the story of their lives to a 
succeeding generation. Cooper saw no active 
service during the time, and resigned his com- 
mission on his marriage. 

Several succeeding years were passed partly in 
Westchester County, his wife's former home, and 
partly in Cooperstown. Here he began the 
erection of a stone dwelling, in Fenimore, a sub- 
urb of the old village. While living at Scars- 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 57 

dale, Westchester County, N. Y., he had pro- 
duced his first book. Already thirty years old, 
a literary career was far from his thoughts. This 
first novel was merely the result of a challenge 
springing from a boast. Reading a dull tale of 
English life to his wife, he declared that he 
could write a better story himself, and as a re- 
sult produced a tale in two volumes, called Pre- 
caution. It was founded upon English society 
life, and it obtained some favorable notices from 
English papers. But it showed no real talent. 
But in the next year, 182 1, he published a story 
foreshadowing his fame and striking a new note 
in American literature. At that time Americans 
still cherished stirring memories of the Revolu- 
tion. Men and women could still recall the vic- 
tories of Bunker Hill and Trenton, and the dis- 
asters of Monmouth and Long Island. 

Cooper's own first impressions of life were 
vivid with the patriotism that beat at fever heat 
during his youth, when the birth of American 
independence was within the recollection of 
many. In choosing a subject for fiction Cooper 
therefore naturally turned to the late struggle, 



58 JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 

and American literature owes him a large debt 
for thus throwing into literary form the spirit of 
those thrilling times. This novel, The Spy, 
was founded upon the story of a veritable spy 
who had been employed by the Revolutionary 
officer who related to Cooper some of his daring 
adventures. Taking this scout for a hero Cooper 
kept the scene in Westchester and wove from a 
few facts the most thrilling piece of fiction that 
had yet appeared in the United States. The 
novel appeared in December, 1821, and in a few 
months it had made Cooper famous both in 
America and Europe. It was published in Eng- 
land by the firm which had brought out Irving's 
Sketch Book, and it met with a success that 
spoke highly for its merit, since the story de- 
scribed English defeat and American triumphs. 
The translator of the Waverley novels made a 
French version, and before long the book ap- 
peared in several other European tongues, while 
its hero, Harvey Birch, won and has kept for 
himself an honorable place in literature. 

Cooper had now found his work, and he con- 
tinued to illustrate American life in fiction. 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 59 

His most popular books are the Leather Stock- 
ing Tales and his novels of the sea. The 
Leather Stocking Tales consist of five stories, 
The Deer slayer, The Last of the Mohicans, 
The Pathfinder, The Pioneers, and The Prairie, 
concerning the same hero, Leatherstocking. 

In The Deer slayer the hero of the series 
makes his appearance as a youth of German de- 
scent whose parents had settled near a clan of 
the Mohegans on the Schoharie River. At a 
great Indian feast he receives the name Deer- 
slayer from the father of Chingachgook, his Ind- 
ian boy friend, and the story is an account of 
his first war-path. The tale was suggested to the 
author one afternoon as he paused for a moment 
while riding to gaze over the lake he so loved, 
and whose shores, as he looked, seemed suddenly 
to be peopled with the figures of a vanished race. 
As the vision faded he turned to his daughter 
and said that he must write a story about the lit- 
tle lake, and thus the idea of Deerslayer was 
born. In a few days the story was begun. The 
scene is laid on Otsego Lake, and in the tale are 
incorporated many tender memories of Cooper's 



6o JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 

own boyhood. It portrays Leatherstocking as a 
young scout just entering manhood, and em- 
bodies some of the author's best work. Perhaps 
no one was so well-fitted to illustrate the ideal 
friendship between Deerslayer and Chingachgook 
as he, who in his boyhood stood many a time be- 
side the lakeside as the shadows fell over the 
forest, not knowing whether the faint crackling 
of the bushes meant the approach of the thirsty 
deer, or signalled the presence of some Indian 
hunter watching with jealous eye the white 
intruder. 

In The Last of the Mohicans, Leatherstock- 
ing, under the name Hawk eye, is represented 
in the prime of manhood, his adventures forming 
some of the most exciting events of the series. 
Here his old friend Chingachgook and the lat- 
ter's son Uncas follow Deerslayer hand in hand, 
and make, next to the hero, the principal char- 
acters of the story, the scene of which is laid near 
Lake Champlain during the trouble between the 
French and English for the possession of Can- 
ada. 

In The Pathfinder the famous scout, under 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 6l 

the name which gives the title to the book, is 
carried still further in his adventurous career. 
The scene is laid near Lake Ontario where 
Cooper spent some months while in the navy. 
These three tales are not only the finest of the 
series from a literary standpoint, but they illus- 
trate as well the life of those white men of the 
forest who lived as near to nature as the Indian 
himself and whose deeds helped make the his- 
tory of the country in its beginnings. 

T/ie Pioneers finds Leatherstocking an old 
hunter living on Otsego Lake at the time of its 
first settlement by the whites. The character 
was suggested by an old hunter of the regions 
who in Cooper's boyhood came frequently to the 
door of his father s house to sell the game he had 
killed. The hero is in this book called Natty 
Bumppo and the story is one of the primitive 
life of the frontiersmen of that period. Their 
occupations, interests and ambitions form the 
background to the picture of Leatherstocking, 
the rustic philosopher, who has finished the 
most active part of his career, and who has 
gathered from nature some of her sweetest les- 



62 JAMES FENIMORE COOPEK 



sons. Many of the scenes in the book are trans- 
scriptions from the actual hfe of those hardy 
pioneers who joined Cooper's father in the settle- 
ment of Cooperstown, while the whole is tinged 
with that tender reminiscence of the author's 
youth which sets it apart from the rest though it 
is, perhaps, the least perfect story of the series. 

Leatherstocking closes his career in The 
Prairie, a novel of the plains of the great West, 
whither he had gone to spend his last days. It 
is the story of the lonely life of the trapper of 
those days, whose love of solitude has led him 
far from the frontier, and whose dignified death 
fitly closes his courageous life. It is supposed 
that the actual experiences of Daniel Boone sug- 
gested this ending to the series. 

The story of the war of the frontiersmen with 
nature, with circumstances and with the red man 
is told in these books. It is the romance of real 
history and Leatherstocking was but the picture 
of many a brave settler whose deeds were unre- 
corded and whose name remains unknown. Side 
by side with Leatherstocking stand those Indian 
characters which the genius of Cooper immor- 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 63 

talized and which have passed into histoiy as 
typical. 

Cooper began the tales without any thought 
of making a series, but the overwhelming suc- 
cess of The Pioneers, the first which appeared, 
led him to produce book after book until the 
whole life of the hero was illustrated. 

Cooper's series of sea novels began with The 
Pilot, published in 1824. It followed The Pi- 
oneers, and showed the novelist to be equally 
at home on sea and land. In his stories of fron- 
tier life. Cooper followed the great Scott, wiiose 
thrilling tales of Border life and of early English 
history had opened a new domain to the novelist. 
Cooper always acknowledged his debt to the 
great Wizard of tlie North, and, indeed, spoke 
of himself as a chip of Scott's block. But in his 
sea stories Cooper was a creator. He was the 
first novelist to bring into fiction the ordinary, 
every-day life of the sailor afloat, whether em- 
ployed on a peaceful merchant vessel or fighting 
hand to hand in a naval battle. And it is interest- 
ing to know that the creation of the sea story 
was another debt that he owed to Scott, though 



64 JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 

in a far different way. Scott's novel, The Pi- 
rate, had been criticised by Cooper as the work 
of a man who had never been at sea. And to 
prove it the work of a landsman he began his 
own story, The Pilot. The time chosen is 
that of the Revolution, and the hero is the famous 
adventurer John Paul Jones, introduced under 
another namiC. It was so new a thing to use the 
technicalities of ship life, and to describe the 
details of an evolution in a naval battle, that, 
familiar as he was with ocean life. Cooper felt 
some doubts of his success. To test his power 
he read one day to an old shipmate that now 
famous account of the passage of the ship 
through the narrow channel. The effect was 
all that Cooper hoped. The old sailor fell into 
a fury of excitement, paced up and down the 
room, and in his eagerness for a moment lived 
over again a stormy scene in his own life. 
Satisfied with this experiment Cooper finished 
the novel in content. 

The Pilot met with an instant success both 
in America and Europe. As it was his first, so 
it is, perhaps, his best sea story. Into it he put 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 65 

all the freshness of reminiscence, all the haunting 
memories of ocean life that had followed him 
since his boyhood. It was biographical in the 
same sense as The Pioneers. A part of the 
romance of childhood drafted into the reality of 
after life. 

The Red Rover, the next sea story, came 
out in 1828. By that time other novehsts were 
writing tales of the sea, but they were mere 
imitations of The Pilot. In The Red Rover 
the genuine adventures of the sailor class were 
again embodied in the thrilling narrative that 
Cooper alone knew how to write, and this book 
has always been one of the most popular of 
novels. 

The Red Rover, so called because of his red 
beard, and whose name gives the title to the 
book, is a well born Englishman who has turned 
pirate, and whose daring adventures have made 
him famous along the coasts of America, Europe 
and Africa. The scene opens in the harbor of 
Newport in the days when that town was the 
most important port of the Atlantic coast, -and 
from there is carried to the high seas, whereon is 
5 



66 JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 

fouo^ht that famous last sea fiorjit of the Red 
Rover, the description of which forms one of 
Cooper's best efforts. 

JVzno- a7id Wing is a tale of the Mediter- 
ranean during the exciting days of privateers and 
pirates in the latter part of the eighteenth cen- 
tury. The great admiral, Nelson, is introduced 
in this book, which abounds with incidents of the 
tropical seas and reflects much of Cooper's ex- 
perience during his apprenticeship on the Sterl- 
ing. The story is one of Cooper's masterpieces, 
and, like so much of his work, has preserved in 
literature a phase of life that has forever passed 
away. 

In The Tiuo Admirals is introduced, for the 
first time in fiction, a description of the evolution 
of great fleets in action. The scene is taken 
from English history, and in many instances the 
story shows Cooper at his best. 

The Water' Witch, and Ned Myers, or Life 
Before the Mast, a biography almost of Cooper's 
own early life at sea, must be included among 
the tales which illustrate the author's genius as a 
writer of tales of the sea. 



JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 67 

Nothing can be more different tlian the pict- 
ure of Leatherstocking and his Indian friends in 
the forest retreats of nature and that of the reck- 
less sailor race which found piracy and murder 
the only outcome for their fierce ambitions. Yet 
both are touched with the art of a master, and 
both illustrate Cooper's claim as one of the 
greatest masters of fiction. 

Besides his Leather Stocking Tales and the 
sea stories Cooper wrote novels, sketches of trav- 
el, essays on the social and political condition 
of America, and innumerable pamphlets in an- 
swer to attacks made upon him by adverse critics. 
But his rank in American literature will ever be 
determined by the Leather Stocking Tales and 
his best sea stories. His place is similar to that 
of Scott in English literature, while he enjoys 
also the reputation of having opened a new and 
enchanted realm of fiction. 

Next to Hawthorne, he will long be held, prob- 
ably, the greatest novelist that America has pro- 
duced. With the exception of seven years abroad, 
Cooper spent his life in his native land. While 
in Europe he wrote some of his best novels, and 



6S JAMES FENIMORE COOPER 



though he grew to love the old world he never 
wavered in his devotion to America. 

Cooper's popularity abroad Vv^as equalled only 
by that of Scott. His works were translated and 
sold even in Turkey, Persia, Egypt and Jerusa- 
lem in the language of those countries. It was 
said by a traveller that the middle classes of 
Europe had gathered all their knowledge of 
American history from Cooper's works and that 
they had never understood the character of 
American independence until revealed by this 
novelist. In spite of defects of style and the 
poor quality of some of his stories, Cooper has 
given to fiction many creations that must Hve as 
long as literature endures. 

He died in his sixty-second year at Coopers- 
town. 



CHAPTER V 

WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

1 794-1878 

William Cullen Bryant was born in 1 794 in a 
log farmhouse in the beautiful Berkshire Hills 
of Western Massachusetts. His father was the 
country doctor and the child was named after a 
celebrated physician. He began his school days 
in a log school-house beside a little brook that 
crept down from the hills and went singing on 
its way to the valley. 

All around stood the great forest-covered hills, 
haunted by wolves, bears, deer and wild-cats, 
which occasionally crept down even to the set- 
tlements carrying terror to the hearts of the 
women and children. Wherever the slopes were 
cleared, the farm lands had taken possession, the 
forest often creeping up close to the little homes. 

From the door-yard of the Bryant homestead 



70 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

the whole world seemed to be made up of hills 
and forest, and fertile fields, while in the woods 
grew the exquisite New England wild flowers, 
the laurel and azalea, the violet, the tiger lily, 
and the fringed gentian. Here also lived the 
summer birds of New England, the robins, the 
blue bird and the thrush, haunting the woods 
from early spring until late autumn. 

All these sights and sounds sunk into the 
boy's heart and made themselves into a poem 
which he wrote down in words many years after, 
and which is as clear and fresh as the voice of 
the little brook itself after which it was named. 
This poem is called The Rivulet and it shows 
the poet-child standing upon the banks of the 
little stream listening to the song of the birds or 
gathering wild flowers. 

It was his first lesson in that wonder-book of 
nature from which he translated so much that 
was beautiful that he became the distinctive 
poet of the woods and streams. 

Lessons from books he learned in the little 
log school-house, preparing himself for ordeals 
when the minister came to visit the school. At 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 7 1 

these times the pupils were dressed in their best 
and sat in solemn anxiety while the minister 
asked them questions out of the catechism and 
made them a long speech on morals and good 
behavior. On one of these occasions the ten- 
year-old poet declaimed some of his own verses 
descriptive of the school. 

In Bryant's boyhood New England farm life 
was very simple. The farmers lived in log or 
slab houses, whose kitchens formed the livinof 
room, where the meals were generally taken. 
Heat was supplied by the great fireplaces that 
sometimes filled one whole side of the kitchen 
and were furnished with cranes, spits, and pot- 
hooks. Behind the kitchen door hung a bundle 
of birch rods with which mischievous boys were 
kept in order, and in the recess of the chimney 
stood the wooden settle where the children sat 
before bed-time to watch the fire or glance up 
through the wide chimney at the stars. 

Here, when three years old, Bryant often 
stood book in hand and with painful attention 
to gesture repeated one of Watts's hymns, while 
his mother listened and corrected. Here he pre- 



72 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

pared his lessons, and wrote those first childish 
poems so carefully criticised by his father, who 
was his teacher in the art of composition. In 
the poem called A Lifetime Bryant long after- 
ward described many incidents of his childhood 
and the influence of his father and mother upon 
his art, one developing his talent for composi- 
tion, and the other directing his imagination to 
and enlisting his sympathies with humanity. 
This poem shows the boy by his mother's knee, 
reading the story of Pharaoh and the Israelites, 
of David and Goliath, and of the life of Christ. 
As he grew older Bryant shared the usual 
amusements of country life. In the spring he 
took his turn in the maple-sugar camp ; in the 
autumn he attended the huskings when the 
young people met to husk the corn in each 
neighborhood barn successively, until all was 
done. He helped at the cider-making bees, 
and the apple parings, when the cider and apple 
sauce were prepared for the year's need ; and at 
the house raisings, when men and boys raised the 
frame of a neighbor's house or barn. In those 
times the farmers depended upon each other for 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 73 



such friendly aid, and the community seemed 
like one great family. 

On Sunday every one went three times to meet- 
ing, listened to long sermons, and sang out of 
the old Bay Psalm Book. If an}^ unlucky child 
fell asleep he was speedily waked up by the tith- 
ingman, who would tickle his nose with a hare's- 
foot attached to a long pole. Once in a while a 
boy might be restless or noisy, and then he was 
led out of the meeting-house and punished with 
the tithingman's rod, a terrible disgrace. 

Throughout his childhood Bryant wrote 
verses upon every subject discussed in the 
family, and in those days New England families 
discussed all the great events of the time. The 
listening children became public-spirited and pa- 
triotic without knowing it. At thirteen Bryant 
wrote a most scathing satire upon the policy 
of Thomas Jefferson, intended to make the 
President hang his head in shame. It was 
quoted in all the newspapers opposed to Jeffer- 
son, and a second edition of this pamphlet 
was called for in a few months. Bryant 
here prophesies the evils in store for the 



74 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

country if the President insisted on the em- 
bargo that was then laid upon American ves- 
sels, and advises him to retire to the bogs of 
Louisiana and search for horned frogs ; advice 
which Jefferson did not feel called upon to fol- 
low. It was Bryant's first introduction to the 
reading public, but it was not that path in litera- 
ture that he was destined to follow. Only one 
or two of his earliest verses give any hint of the 
poet of nature, though it was during this time 
that he absorbed those influences that directed 
his whole life. It is from the retrospective 
poem, Green Rivei^, that we really know the 
boy Bryant to whom the charm of sky and wood 
and singing brook was so unconscious that it 
seemed a part of life itself. In Gree^i River, 
written after he became a man, we hear the 
echoes of his young days, and we know that th© 
boy's soul had already entered into a close com- 
munion with nature. 

But Bryant had not yet reached manhood 
when the true voice of his heart was heard in the 
most celebrated poem that he ever wrote, and 
one of the most remarkable ever written by a 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 75 

youth. This was Thanatopsis, which his father 
discovered among his papers and sent to the 
North American Reviezu without his son's 
knowledge, so little did the poet of eighteen, 
who five years before had published the tirade 
against Jefferson, realize that he had produced 
the most remarkable verses yet written in 
America. 

Thanatopsis attracted instant attention in this 
country and in England. It had appeared 
anonymously, and American critics insisted that 
it could not be the work of an American author, 
as no native poet approached it either in sub- 
limity of thought or perfection of style. But 
Thanatopsis bears no trace of English influ- 
ence, nor was it strange that an heir of the Puri- 
tan spirit, who had lived in daily communion with 
nature, should thus set to the music of poetry 
the hopes and inspirations of his race. 

Thanatopsis is the first great American 
poem, and it divides by a sharp line the poetry 
hitherto written on our soil from that which was 
to follow. Henceforth the poets of the newer 
England ceased to find their greatest inspiration 



^6 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

in the older land. At the time of the publica- 
tion of the poem Bryant was studying law in 
Great Barrington, Mass., having been obliged 
by poverty to leave college after a two years' 
course. It was in the brief interval before be- 
ginning his office studies that he wrote Thaiia- 
topsis putting it aside for future revision. 

He was already hard at work upon his profes- 
sion when his sudden literary success changed all 
his plans. Destined by nature to be a man of 
letters, he poured forth verse and prose during 
the whole time he was studying and practising 
law. Six months after the publication of Thana- 
top sis the poem entitled To a Waterfowl, sug- 
gested by the devious flight of a wild duck across 
the sunset sky, appeared. 

It is a perfect picture of the reedy river banks, 
the wet marshes, and the lonely lakes over which 
the bird hovered, and it is full of the charm of 
nature herself. From this time on Bryant's 
touch never faltered. He was the chosen poet 
of the wild beauty of his native hills and val- 
leys, and his own pure spirit revealed the most 
sacred meanings of this beauty. 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT "J^ 



In 1 82 1 he published his first volume of poems 
under the title, Poems by William Culleji Bry- 
ant, It was a little book of forty pages, con- 
taining Thanatopsis, Green River, To a Watei^- 
fowl, and other pieces, among which was the 
charming. The Yellozu Violet, a very breath of 
the spring. This little book was given to the 
world in the same year in which Cooper pub- 
lished The Spy and Irving completed The Sketch 
Book. 

In 1825 Bryant removed to New York to as- 
sume the editorship of a monthly review, to 
which he gave many of his best-known poems. 
A year later he joined the staff of the Evening 
Post, with which he was connected until his 
death. 

From this time his life was that of a literary 
man. He made of the Evening Post a progres- 
sive, public-spirited newspaper, whose field em- 
braced every phase of American life. When he 
became its editor five days were required for the 
reports of the Legislature at Albany to reach 
New York, these being carried by mail coach. 
The extracts printed from English newspapers 



78 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

were a month old, and even this was considered 
enterprising journalism. All the despatches from 
different cities of the United States bore dates a 
fortnight old, while it was often impossible to 
obtain news at all. The paper contained adver- 
tisements of the stage lines to Boston, Philadel- 
phia, and the West ; accounts of projects to 
explore the centre of the earth by means of 
sunken w^ells ; reports of the possibility of a 
railroad being built in the United States ; adver- 
tisements of lottery tickets ; a list of the un- 
claimed letters at the post-office, and usually a 
chapter of fiction. Such was the newspaper of 
1831. 

During the fifty-two years of his editorship 
the United States were developed from a few 
struggling colonies bound together by common 
interests into one of the greatest of modern 
nations. And through all the changes incident 
to this career Bryant stood always firm to the 
principles which he recognized as the true foun- 
dations of a country's greatness. 

When he was born the United States con- 
sisted of a strip of land lying between the 



"WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 79 

Atlantic and the Alleghany Mountains, of which 
more than half was unbroken wilderness. At 
his death the Republic extended from the Atlan- 
tic to the Pacific and from the Gulf to Canada. 
His life-time corresponded with the growth of 
his country, and his own work was a noble con- 
tribution to the nation's prosperity. In all times 
of national trouble the Evening Post championed 
the cause of justice, and Bryant was everywhere 
respected as a man devoted above all to the 
''cause of America and of human nature." 

The conduct of the Evening Post did not, 
however, interfere with his work as a poet, and • 
in 1832 he published in one volume all the 
poems which he had written, most of which had i 
previously appeared in magazines. A few j 
months later an edition appeared in London 
with an introduction by Irving. It was this 
volume which gave Bryant an English reputa- 
tion as great as that he enjoyed in America. 
Like Cooper, he revealed an unfamiliar nature 
as seen in American forests, hills, and streams, 
taking his readers with him into those solitary 
and quiet places where dwelt the wild birds and 



8o WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 

wild flowers. The very titles of his poems show 
how closely he lived to the life of the world 
around him. The Walk at Sunset, The West 
Wind, The Forest Hymn, A ntiunn Woods, The 
Death of the Flowe^^s, The FiHnged Gentian, 
The Wind and Stream, The Little People of the 
Snow, and many others disclose how Bryant 
gathered from every source the beauty which he 
translated into his verses. 

Among the poems which touch upon the 
Indian traditions are The Indian GirTs Lament, 
Monument Mountain, and An Lidian at the 
Bitrial-place of his Father, In these he lingers 
upon the pathetic fate of the red man driven 
from the home of his race and forced into exile 
by the usurping whites. They are full of sad- 
ness, seeming to wake once again the memories 
of other times when the forest was alive with 
the night -fires of savage man and the days 
brought only the gladness of freedom. 

Besides his original work Bryant performed a 
noble task in the translation of the Iliad and 
Odyssey oi Homer. He was over seventy when 
he began this work, and was five years in com- 



WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT 8 1 



pleting it. The poems are put into blank verse, 
of which Bryant was a master, and they have 
caught the very spirit of the old Greek bard ; so 
faithfully did the modern poet understand that 
shadowy past that he might have watched with 
Helen the burning of Troy, or journeyed with 
Ulysses throughout his wanderings in the peril- 
ous seas. 

The light of Bryant's imagination burned 
steadily to the end. In his eighty-second year 
he wTOte his last important poem. The Flood of 
Years. It is a beautiful confession of faith in 
the nobility of life and the immortality of the 
soul, and a fitting crown for an existence so 
beneficent and exalted. 

His last public work was to participate in 
unveiling a monument to the Italian statesman 
Mazzini in Central Park, when he was the orator 
of the day. On the same evening he was seized 
with his last illness. He died on June 12, 1878, 
and was buried at Roslyn, Long Island, one of 
his favorite country homes. 



CHAPTER VI 

WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT 

1796-1859 

One of the stories that mankind has always 
liked to believe is that of the existence of a mar- 
vellous country Vv^hose climate was perfect, whose 
people were happy, whose king was wise and 
good, and where wealth abounded. The old 
travellers of the Middle Ages dreamed of finding 
this land somewhere in the far East. Many 
books were WTitten about it, and many tales told 
by knight and palmer of its rivers of gold, mines 
of precious stones, and treasure vaults of inex- 
haustible riches. But, although from time to 
time some famous traveller like Marco Polo or 
Sir John Mandeville described the great wealth 
of Ormus or Cathay, yet no one ever found the 
real country of his imagination, and the dream 
passed down from generation to generation un- 



WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT 83 



fulfilled. The Spaniards called this country El 
Dorado, and perhaps their vision of it was the 
wildest of all, for not only were they to find 
inexhaustible riches, but trees whose fruit would 
heal disease, magic wells which yielded happi- 
ness, and fountains of immortal youth. Thus 
dreamed the Spaniard of the fifteenth century, 
and when Columbus found the new world it was 
believed that it included El Dorado. Leader 
after leader mustered his knights and soldiers 
and sought the golden country. They traversed 
forests, climbed mountains, forded rivers, and 
waded through swamps and morasses ; they suf- 
fered hunger, thirst, and fever, and the savage 
hostility of the Indians ; they died by hundreds 
and were buried in unmarked graves, and expe- 
dition after expedition returned to Spain to re- 
port the fruitlessness of their search. But the 
hope was not given up. New seekers started 
on the quest, and it seemed that the ships of 
Spain could hardly hold her eager adventurers. 

In a strange way this dream of El Dorado 
was realized. Two soldiers of fortune, bolder, 
hardier, luckier than the rest, actually found not 



84 WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT 

one country but two, which were in part at 
least like the golden world they sought. High 
upon the table-land of Mexico and guarded by 
its snow-capped mountains they found the king- 
dom of the Aztecs, with their vast wealth of gold 
and silver. Safe behind the barrier of the An- 
des lay the land of the Incas, whose riches were, 
like those of Ophir or Cathay, not to be meas- 
ured. Both of these countries possessed a strange 
and characteristic civilization. In fact, even to 
this day, scholars are puzzled to know the source 
of the knowledge which these people possessed. 
In Mexico Hernando Cortez found a govern- 
ment whose head was the king, supported by a 
tribunal of judges who governed the principal 
cities. If a judge took a bribe he was put to 
death. In the king's tribunal the throne was 
of gold inlaid with turquoises. The walls were 
hung with tapestry embroidered with figures of 
birds and flowers. Over the throne was a can- 
opy flashing with gold and jewels. There were 
officers to escort prisoners to and from court, 
and an account of the proceedings was kept in 
hieroglyphic paintings. All the laws of the 



WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT 85 

kingdom were taught by these paintings to the 
people. The Aztecs had orders of nobility and 
knighthood ; they had a military code and hos- 
pitals for the sick. Their temples glittered with 
gold and jewels, and they had ceremonies of 
baptism, marriage, and burial. They had mo- 
nastic orders, astrologists and astronomers, physi- 
cians, merchants, jewellers, mechanics, and hus- 
bandmen. Their palaces were treasure-houses 
of wealth. In fact, they were as unlike the 
Indians of the eastern coast of America as the 
Englishman of to-day is unlike the half-naked 
savage who in the early ages roamed through 
England, subsisting upon berries and raw flesh. 

In Peru Francisco Pizarro found a great and 
powerful empire, ruled over by a wise sovereign. 
In the whole length and breadth of the land not 
one poor or sick person was left un cared for by 
the state. Great highways traversed mountain 
passes and crossed ravines and precipices to the 
most distant parts of the kingdom. Huge 
aqueducts of stone carried the mountain streams 
for hundreds of miles to the plains below. Mas- 
sive fortresses, whose masonry was so solid that 



86 WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT 

it seemed part of the mountain itself, linked the 
cities together, and a postal system extended over 
the empire composed of relays of couriers who 
wore a peculiar livery and ran from one post to 
another at the rate of one hundred and fifty miles 
a day. The walls of temples and palaces were 
covered with plates of gold encrusted with pre- 
cious stones. The raiment of the king and nobles 
was embroidered with jewels. The lakes in the 
royal court-yards were fringed with wild flowers 
brought from every corner of the empire and 
representing every degree of climate. In a word, 
it was the dream of El Dorado fulfilled. 

Although these two countries were alike 
peopled by races who had lived there since re- 
mote antiquity, neither had ever heard of the 
existence of the other, and thus we have the 
picture of two civilizations, very similar, spring- 
ing up independently. 

The conquest of Mexico by Cortez in 152 1 
changed the entire life of the people. Their 
forts and cities were ruined ; three of their kings 
had fallen during the struggle ; the whole country 
had been divided among the conquerors, and the 



WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT 8/ 

Aztecs were made slaves. Cortez rebuilt the 
City of Mexico and filled the country with 
cathedrals and convents. He tried to convert 
the natives to Christianity, and Mexico became 
Spanish in its laws and institutions. 

But the old civilization had passed away ; there 
was no more an Aztec nation ; and though in 
time the Indians and Spaniards formed together 
a new race, it did not partake of the spirit of the 
old. 

What Cortez did for Mexico, Pizarro accom- 
plished twelve years later in Peru. On the death 
of their monarch, the Inca, the Peruvians lost 
spirit and were more easily conquered than the 
Aztecs. Peru became a Spanish province, and, 
like Mexico, was considered by the crown only 
as a treasure-house from which to draw endless 
wealth. No regret was felt for the two great 
and powerful nations that had ceased to exist. 

In the meantime the settlement of America 
went on rapidly. Florida, the valley of the 
Mississippi, Canada, and New England became 
powerful colonies forming the nucleus of new' 
countries, which had never heard of the civiliza- 



WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT 



tions of Mexico and Peru, and whose only knowl- 
edge of Indians was gathered from the savage 
tribes from which they had wrested the soil. In 
1610 the Spanish historian Solis wrote an ac- 
count of the subjugation of Mexico, in which 
the conquerors were portrayed in glowing colors. 
This work was read chiefly by scholars. In 
1779 the English historian Robertson gave in 
his History of the New World a brilliant sketch 
of the Spanish conquests in America. But not 
until 1847 ^v^s the world offered the detailed 
narrative of the conquest and ruin of the Aztec 
empire. 

This work was from the pen of the American 
scholar, William H. Prescott, who was already 
known as the author of a history of Ferdinand 
and Isabella of Spain, a work which had brought 
him a European reputation. 

Prescott was born in Salem, Mass., in 1796, 
in an old elm-shaded house. From his earliest 
years he was a teller of stories, and had a high 
reputation among his boy friends as a romancer. 
Walking to and from school with his compan- 
ions he invented tale after tale, sometimes the 



WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT 89 

narrative being continued from day to day, 
lessons and home duties being considered but 
tiresome interruptions to the real business of life. 
Very often one of these stories begun on Mon- 
day would be continued through the whole week, 
and the end be celebrated on Saturday by a visit 
to the Boston Athenaeum, into whose recesses 
he would beguile his fellows, while they buckled 
on the old armor found there, and played at 
joust and tournament, imagining themselves to 
be Lancelot, Ronsard, or Bayard, as the case 
might be. 

A life of Gibbon which Prescott read in his 
teens led to an enthusiastic study of history and 
to the resolve to become if possible a historian 
himself. While a student at Harvard one of his 
eyes was so injured by the carelessness of a 
fellow pupil that he lost the entire use of it ; but 
he kept to the resolution to fulfil the task he had 
set for himself. His fame began with the pub- 
lication of the History of Ferdinand and Isa- 
bella, which was published almost simultaneously 
in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, and Russia. 
It covers the history of Spain from the Moorish 



90 WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT 

invasion through the period of national glory 
which illumined the reign of Isabella. The 
civil wars, the Jewish persecutions, the discovery 
of the New World, the expulsion of the Moors, 
the Italian wars, and the social life of the people, 
their arts and pursuits, their amusements, and 
the literature of that age, are vividly pre- 
sented. 

The recognition of his merits was welcome to 
Prescott. While doubting which subject to 
choose for his labors he had heard several lect- 
ures upon Spanish literature, prepared for de- 
livery at Harvard College, and at once applied 
himself to the study of the Spanish language, 
history, and romance as a preparation for his 
life work, and two years after began his celebrated 
work. The book was eleven years in prepara- 
tion, and is full of enthusiasm for the romance 
and chivalry of the Old World. Prescott's 
History of the Conquest of Mexico began 
with a sketch of the ancient Aztec civilization, 
proceeded to a description of the conquest by 
Cortez, and concluded with an account of the 
after career of the great commander, the whole 



WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT 



work seeming a brilliant romance rather than 
sober history. 

The materials for Prescott's work were gath- 
ered from every known available source. The 
narratives of eye-witnesses were brought forth 
from their hiding-places in the royal libraries of 
Spain, and patiently transcribed ; old letters, un- 
published chronicles, royal edicts, monkish leg- 
ends, every scrap of information attainable, was 
transmitted to the worker across the sea, who 
because of his partial blindness had to depend 
entirely upon others in the collection of his au- 
thorities. These documents were read to Pres- 
cott by a secretary, who took notes under the 
author's direction ; these notes were again read 
to him, and then after sifting, comparing and, 
retracing again and again the old ground, the 
historian began his work. He wrote upon a 
noctograph with an ivory stylus, as a blind man 
writes, and because of great physical weakness 
he was able to accomplish only a very little each 
day. But week by week the work grew. His 
marvellous memory enabled him to recall sixty 
pages of printed matter at once. His wonderful 



92 WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT 

imagination enabled him to present the Mexico 
of the sixteenth century as it appeared to the old 
Spanish cavaliers, and as no historian had ever 
presented it before. He made of each episode 
of the great drama a finished and perfect picture. 
In fact, the History of the Conquest of Mexico 
is more than anything else a historical painting 
wrought to perfection by the cunning of the 
master hand. 

Prescott spent six years over this work, which 
enhanced his fame as a historian and kept for 
American literature the high place won by Irv- 
ing. Indeed, Irving himself had designed to 
write the history of the conquest of Mexico, but 
withdrew in favor of Prescott. 

Three months after the publication of his work 
on Mexico, Prescott began the History of the 
Conquest of Pent, the materials for which had 
already been obtained. But these documents 
proved much more complete than those describ- 
ing the Mexican conquest. 

The conquest of Mexico was achieved mainly 
by one man, Cortez ; but while Pizarro was vir- 
tually the head of the expedition against Peru, 



WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT 93 

he was accompanied by others whose plans were 
often opposed to his own, and whose personal 
devotion could never be counted upon. Each of 
these men held regular correspondence with the 
court of Spain, and Pizarro never knew when 
his own account of the capture of a city or set- 
tlement of a colony would be contradicted by the 
statement of one of his officers. After the capt- 
ure and death of the Inca, which was the real 
conquest of the country from the natives, Pi- 
zarro was obliged to reconquer Peru from his 
own officers, who quarrelled with him and 
among themselves continually. 

The conquest is shown to be a war of ad- 
venturers, a crusade of buccaneers, who wanted 
only gold. The sieges and battles of the Span- 
iards read like massacres, and the story of the 
death of the Inca like an unbelievable horror 
of the Dark Ages. This scene, contrasted with 
the glowing description of the former mag- 
nificence of the Inca, shows Prescott in his most 
brilliant mood as a writer. Perhaps his great- 
est gift is this power of reproducing faithfully 
the actual spirit of the conquest, a spirit which, 



94 WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT 

in spite of the glitter of arms and splendor of 
religious ceremonial, proves to have been one of 
greed and lowest selfishness. 

The Conquest of Pertc, published in 1847, when 
Prescott was fifty-two years old, was the last of his 
historical works. These three histories, with three 
volumes of an uncompleted life of Philip II., 
which promised to be his greatest work, and a 
volume of essays comprise Prescott's contribu- 
tion to American literature, and begin that series 
of brilliant historical works of which American 
letters boast. 

Prescott, during the most of his literary life, 
was obliged to sit quietly in his study, leaving to 
other hands the collection of the materials for his 
work. For, besides the accident which during 
his college life deprived him of one eye, he was 
always delicate. Sometimes he would be kept 
for months in a darkened room, and at best his 
life was one of seclusion. The strife of the 
world and of action was not for him. In his 
library, surrounded by his books and assisted by 
his secretary, he sought for truth as the old al- 
chemists sought for gold. Patient and tireless 



WILLIAM H. PRESCOTT g$ 

he unravelled thread after thread of the fabric 
from which he was to weave the history of the 
Spanish conquests. 

If Prescott had had access to documents which 
have since come to light, if he had been able to 
visit the places he described, and to study their 
unwritten records, his work would have been a 
splendid and imperishable monument to the dead 
civilization of the Aztec and Peruvian. 

As it is, it must serve as a guiding light point- 
ing to the right way, one which shed lustre on 
the new literature of his country and opened an 
unexplored region to the American writer. 



CHAPTER VII 

JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

1807-1892 

In an old New England farm-house kitchen, 
a barefoot boy, dressed in homespun, one day 
sat listening to a lazy Scotch beggar who piped 
the songs of Burns in return for his meal of 
bread and cheese and cider. The beggar was 
good-natured, and the boy was an eager listener, 
and Bon7tze Doon, Highland Mary, and Atild 
Lang Syne were trilled forth as the master him- 
self may have sung them among the Scottish 
"banks and braes." Never before had the 
farmer boy heard of the famous peasant, and a 
new door was opened through which he passed 
into an undreamed of world. A few months 
later the school - master gave him a copy of 
Burns's poems, and with this gift the boy became 
a poet himself. For these songs of roadsides 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 9/ 



and meadows, of ploughed fields and wet hedge- 
rows, were to him familiar pictures of every-day 
life, whose poetry, once revealed, had to express 
itself in words. 

The boy was the son of John and Abigail 
Whittier, Quaker farmers owning a little home- 
stead in the valley of the Merrimac, near the 
tov/n of Haverhill, Mass. In honor of an ances- 
tor he had been named John Greenleaf Whit- 
tier, the Greenleaf, as he tells us in one of his 
poems, having become Americanized from the 
French feiiille vcide, gi^ccn leaf, a suggestion, 
perhaps, of far away days in which the fam- 
ily might have been men of the wood, keep- 
ers of the deer or forest guarders in France dur- 
ing feudal ages. In his boyhood, life in the 
Merrimac valley was primitive enough. The 
house was small and plain, the kitchen being the 
living room, and the })arlor dedicated to Sunday 
and holiday use only. The floor was sanded and 
on the wide fire-place benches the men and 
children of the family sat at night to whittle axe- 
handles, mend shoes, crack nuts, or learn the 
next day's lessons. Often a stranger was found 
7 



98 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

among them ; some Quaker travelling on busi- 
ness, or a stranger on his way to some distant 
town, or perhaps a professional beggar to whom 
the hospitality of the place was well known. 
Once when the mother had refused a night's 
shelter to an unprepossessing vagabond, John 
was sent out to bring him back. He proved 
to be an Italian artisan, and after supper he 
told them of the Italian grape gatherings and 
festivals, and of the wonderful beauty of Italy, 
paying for his entertainment by presenting to 
the mother a recipe for making bread from 
chestnuts. 

Sometimes the visitor would be an uncanny 
old crone who still believed in witches and 
fairies, and who told how her butter refused to 
come, or how her candle had been snuffed out 
by a witch in the form of a big black bug. One 
old woman in the neighborhood was renowned 
for her tales of ghosts, devils, fairies, brownies, 
sprenties, enchanted towers, headless men, 
haunted mills that were run at night by ghostly 
millers and witches riding on broom-sticks by 
the light of the full moon, and descending un- 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 99 

guarded chimneys to lay their spells upon cream- 
pot and yeast-bowl. 

After such an evening's entertainment the 
boy needed courage to leave the bright kitchen 
fire and climb up the narrow stairs to the loft 
where he slept, and where the sound of the 
night-wind crept through the frosty rafters, and 
the voice of the screech-owl came dismally from 
the trees outside. 

Haverhill boasted at that time its village con- 
jurer, who could remove the spells of those 
wicked spirits, and whose gaunt form could be 
seen any day along the meadows and streams 
gathering herbs to be stewed and brewed into 
love-potions, cures for melancholy, spells against 
witchcraft, and other remedies for human ills. 
Fie was held in great respect by the inhabitants, 
and feared almost as much as the witches them- 
selves. 

An ever-welcome guest at the Whittiers was 
the school-master, whose head was full of the 
local legends, and whose tales of Indian raids 
and of revolutionary struggles were regarded as 
authentic history. This Yankee pedagogue, 



100 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

moreover, could, with infinite spirit and zest, re- 
tell the classic stories of the Greek and Latin 
poets. 

Twice a year came to the little homestead the 
Yankee pedler, with his supply of pins, needles, 
thread, razors, soaps, and scissors for the elders, 
and jack-knives for the boys who had been saving 
their pennies to purchase those treasures. He 
had gay ribbons for worldly minded maids, but 
these were never bou2:ht for Quaker Whittier's 
daughters. But to Poet John's thinking the 
pedler s choicest wares were the songs of his own 
composing, printed with wood-cuts, which he 
sold at an astonishingly low price, or even, upon 
occasions, gave away. These songs celebrated 
earthquakes, fires, shipwrecks, hangings, mar- 
riages, deaths, and funerals. Often they were 
improvised as the pedler sat with the rest around 
the hearth fire. If a wedding had occurred 
during his absence he was ready to versify it, 
and equally ready to lament the loss of a fa- 
vorite cow. To Whittier this gift of rhyming 
seemed marvellous, and in after years he de- 
scribed this wanderinsf minstrel as encircled, to 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER lOI 



his young eyes, with the very nimbus of immor- 
taHty. 

Such was the home-Hfe of this barefooted boy, 
who drove the cows night and morning through 
the dewy meadows, and followed the oxen, break- 
ing the earth into rich brown furrows, whose sight 
and smell suggested to him always the generous 
bounty of nature. From early spring, when the 
corn was planted in fields bordered by wild rose- 
bushes, to late autumn, when the crop lay bound 
into glistening sheaves, his life was one of steady 
toil, lightened sometimes by a day's fishing in the 
mountain streams or by a berrying excursion up 
among the hills. 

In cold weather he went to school in the little 
school-house that he celebrates in one of his 
poems, and very often, as he confessed, he v/as 
found writing verses instead of doing sums on 
his slate. 

This old phase of New-England life has now 
passed away, but he has preserved its memory in 
three poems, which are in a special sense bio- 
graphical. These poems are. The Barefoot Boy, 
My Schoolmaster, and Snoiu-Boimd. The first 



I02 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

two are simple, boyish memories, but the last is a 
description not only of his early home, but of the 
New-England farm life, and is a Puritan idyl. 

All are full of the idealization of childhood, 
for the poet could never break loose from the 
charm which had enthralled him as a boy. The 
poetry of common life which lay over the meadow 
lands and fields of grain, which gave a voice to 
the woodland brook, and glorified the falling 
rain and snow, was felt by Whittier, when, as a 
child, he paused from his work to listen to the 
robin's song among the wheat or watch the flocks 
of clouds making their way across the sum- 
mer sky. 

When he was nineteen years of age the coun- 
try-side mail-carrier one day rode up to the farm 
and took from his saddle-bags the weekly paper, 
which he tossed to the boy, who stood mending 
a fence. With trembling eagerness Whittier 
opened it, and saw in the " Poet's Corner" his 
first printed poem. He had sent it with little 
hope that it would be accepted, and the sight of 
it filled him with joy, and determined his literary 
career. A few months later the editor of the 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 103 

paper, William Lloyd Garrison, drove out to 
the homestead to see the young verse-maker. 
Whittier was called from the field where he was 
hoeing, and in the interview that followed Gar- 
rison insisted that such talent should not be 
thrown away, and urged the youth to take a 
course of study at some academy. But, although 
the farm supplied the daily needs of the family, 
money was scarce, and the sum required for 
board and tuition was impossible to scrape to- 
gether. A young farm assistant, however, offered 
to teach Whittier the trade of shoemaking, and 
his every moment of leisure was thereafter spent 
in learning this craft. During the following 
winter the lad furnished the women of the neigh- 
borhood v/ith good, well-made shoes, and with 
the money thus earned he entered Haverhill 
Academy in April, 1827, being then in his twen- 
tieth year. For the next six months his favorite 
haunts in field and wood were unvisited, except 
on the Saturdays and Sundays spent with his 
family. Fie gained some reputation as a poet 
by the publication of the ode which he wrote 
in honor of the new academy, and although he 



I04 JOHN GREENLEAF WIIITTIER 

returned to the farm after six months of study, 
it was only to earn more money for further 
schooling. 

His poems and sketches now began to ap- 
pear in the different newspapers and periodi- 
cals, and he did some editing for various papers. 
This work brought him into notice among liter- 
ary people, but it was his political convictions 
that first gave him a national reputation. 

From the first Whittier stood side by side with 
William Lloyd Garrison in his crusade against 
slavery, and many of his best poems appeared in 
the Liberator, Garrison's own paper. These 
poems, with others, were collected in a volume 
called Voices of Freedom. It was these songs, 
which rushed onward like his own mountain 
brooks, that made Whittier known from one 
end of the country to the other as an apostle of 
liberty. All Whittier's poems of this period be- 
long to the political history of the country, of 
v/hich they are as much a part as the v/ar records. 

In all this work there is no trace of bitterness 
or enmity. His songs of freedom were but the 
bugle-notes calling the nation to a higher human- 



JOHN GREENLEAF WlilTTlER 105 

ity. Like the old Hebrew prophets, he spared 
not his own, and many of his most burning words 
are a summons to duty to his brothers in the 
North. If he could remind the South that the 
breath of slavery tainted the air 

" That old Dekalb and Sumter drank," 

he could also, in Barbara Frictchie, pay loving 
tribute to the noble heart of one of her best-loved 
sons. His was the dream of the great nation to 
be — his spirit that of the preacher who saw his 
people unfaithful to the high trust they had re- 
ceived as guardians of the land which the world 
had been taught to regard as the home of liberty. 
It was this high conception that gave to his work 
its greatest povvxr, and that made Whittier, 
above all others, the poet of freedom ; so that 
although the mission of these poems has ceased, 
and as literature they will not appeal to succeed- 
ing generations as forcibly as they did to their 
own, as a part of national history they v/ill be 
long preserved. 

Whittier's other poems deal so largely with the 
home-life of his day that he is called the poet of 



I06 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 

New England. All its traditions, memories, and 
beliefs are faithfully recorded by him. In Snow- 
Boitnd we have the life of the New-England 
farmer. In Mabel Martin we see again the old 
Puritan dogmatism hunting down witches, burn» 
ing or hanging them, and following with relent- 
less persecution the families of the unhappy 
wretches who thus cam^e under the ban. In Mogg 
Megone is celebrated in beautiful verse one of 
those legends of Indian life which linger immor- 
tally around the pines of New England, while 
the Grave by the Lake, the Changeling, the 
Wreck of River moiitJi, the Dead Ship of Harps- 
well, and others in the collection called the Tent 
on the Beach, revive old traditions of those early 
days when history mingled with legend and the 
belief in water-spirits and ghostly warnings had 
not yet vanished. 

In some exquisite ballads, such as School Days, 
we have the memory of the past, fresh as the 
wild violets which the poet culled as a boy, while 
Ma2id Midler is a very idyl of a New-England 
harvest-field in the poet's youth. In Among the 
Hills we have some of Whittier's best poems of 



JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER lO/ 

country life, while many minor poems celebrate 
the hills and streams of which he was so fond. 
Whittier wrote, also, miany beautiful hymns, and 
his poems for children, such as King Solomon 
and the Ants and The Robin, show how easy it 
was for his great heart to enter into the spirit of 
childhood. Child Life, his compilation of po- 
ems for childhood, is one of the best ever made, 
w^hile another compilation, called Songs of Three 
Centuries, shows his wide familiarity and appre- 
ciation of all that is great in English poetry. 

After the sale of the old home of his child- 
hood Whittier lived in the house at Amesbury, 
wdiich for many years his sister shared. His last 
collection of poems, called Siindown, was pub- 
lished in 1890, for some friends only, as a me- 
mento of his eightieth birthday. He died two 
years later, and was buried in the yard of the 
Friends' meeting-house in Amesbury, a short 
distance from his birthplace. 



CHAPTER VIII 

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 

1804-1864 

In 1804 the town of Salem, In Massachusetts, 
was the most important seaport in America. 
With the regularity of the tides its ships sailed to 
China, the East Indies, the Feejee Islands, South 
America, and the West Indies, and its seamen 
were as well known in the harbors of these dis- 
tant places as in their native town. Throughout 
the Revolution Salem, with some neighboring 
smaller ports, was the hope of the colonists. 
No American navy existed ; but the merchants 
and marines turned their vessels into ships of 
war, and under the name of privateers swept the 
seas of British cruisers, capturing in six years 
over four hundred and fifty prizes. During the 
war of 181 2, again, the naval service was led by 
the hardy Salem captains, and the brave little 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE IO9 

seaport gave generously to the cause of the 
nation. Salem from the first was identified with 
American independence. Upon her hillsides 
one memorable day the inhabitants gathered to 
w^atch the fight between the Chesapeake and the 
Shannon, and through her streets, a few weeks 
later, the body of the heroic Lawrence w^as 
borne in state. Among the thronging crowds 
that day must have wandered the boy Nathaniel 
Hawthorne, then in his tenth year. Born in 
Salem, he came of a line of seafaring men who 
had fought their way to fame and fortune in the 
teeth of wind and wave ; his family having its 
American beginning at the time when Indian 
and white man alike made their homes in the 
shadowy aisles of the New-England forests. 
These ocean-roving ancestors w^ere among the 
first to take an American ship to St. Petersburg, 
Sumatra, Australia, and Africa. They fought 
pirates, overcame savages, suffered shipwreck 
and disaster, and many of them found their 
graves in the waters of some foreign sea. Haw- 
thorne's own father was lost on a voyage. 

From this race of hardv sailors Hawthorne 



no NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 

inherited the patience, courage, and endurance 
which were the basis of his character, a character 
touched besides by that melancholy and love of 
solitude which is apt to distinguish those born 
by the sea. It is this combination, perhaps, of 
Puritan steadfastness of purpose and wild adven- 
turous life that descended to Hawthorne in the 
form of the most exquisite imagination tinctured 
with the highest moral aspirations. It was the 
sturdy, healthy plant of Puritanism blossoming 
into a beautiful flower. 

In this old town of Salem, with its quaint 
houses, with their carv^cd doorways and many 
windows, with its pretty rose-gardens, its beauti- 
ful overshadowing elms, its dingy court-house and 
celebrated town-pump, Hawthorne passed his 
early life, his picturesque surroundings forming 
a suitable environment for the handsome, imagi- 
native boy who was to create the most beautiful 
literary art that America had yet known. Be- 
hind the town stood old Witch Hill, grim and 
ghastly with memories of the witches hanged 
there in colonial times. In front spread the sea, 
a golden argosy of promise, whose wdiarves and 



NAniANIEL HAWTHORNE 



warehouses held priceless stores of merchandise. 
Between this haunting spirit of the past and the 
broader, newer life of the future, Hawthorne 
walked with the serene hope of the youth of 
that day. The old, intolerant Puritanism had 
passed away. Only the fine gold remained as 
the priceless treasure of the new generation. 

Hawthorne's boyhood was much like that of 
any other boy in Salem town. He went to 
school and to church, loved the sea and prophe- 
sied that he should go aw^ay on it some day and 
never return, was fond of reading, and ready to 
fight with any school-fellows who had, as he ex- 
pressed it, " a quarrelsome disposition." He was 
a healthy, robust lad, finding life a good thing 
whether he was roaming the streets, sitting idly 
on the wharves, or stretched on the floor at 
home reading a favorite author. 

Almost all boys who have become writers 
have liked the same books, and Hawthorne, 
like his fellows, lived in the magic world of 
Shakespeare and Milton, Spenser, Froissart, 
and Bunyan. T/ie Pilgrinis Progress was an 
especial favorite with him, its lofty spirit carry- 



112 -NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 

ing his soul into those spiritual regions which 
the child mind reverences without understand- 
ing. For one year of his boyhood he was su- 
premely happy in the wild regions of Sebago 
Lake, Me., where the family lived for a time. 
Here, he says, he led the life of a bird of the 
air, with no restraint and in absolute freedom. 
In the summer he would take his gun and spend 
days in the forest, doing v/hatever pleased his 
vagabond spirit at the moment. In the winter 
he would follow the hunters through the snow, 
or skate till midnight alone upon the frozen lake 
with only the shadows of the hills to keep him 
company, and sometimes pass the remainder of 
the night in a solitary log cabin, warmed by the 
blaze of the fallen evergreens. 

But he had to return to Salem to prepare for 
college, whither he went in .1821, in his seven- 
teenth year. He entered Bovvdoin, and had 
among his fellow -students Henry Wadsworth 
Longfellow, and Franklin Pierce, afterward 
President of the United States. Here Hav\^- 
thorne spent happy days, and long afterward, 
in writing to an old college friend, he speaks of 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 



the charm that lingers around the memory of 
the place when he gathered blueberries in study 
hours, watched the great logs drifting down the 
current of the Androscoo^O^in from the lumber 
districts above, fished in the forest streams, and 
shot pigeons and squirrels in hours which should 
have been devoted to the classics. 

In this same letter, w^hich forms the dedication 
to one of his books, he adds that it is this friend, 
if any one, who is responsible for his becoming 
a writer, as it w^as here, in the shadow of the tall 
pines which sheltered Bowdoin College, that the 
first prophecy concerning his destiny was made. 
He was to be a writer of fiction, the friend said, 
little dreaming of the honors that were to crown 
one of the great novelists of the world. 

After leaving Bowdoin Hawthorne returned 
to Salem, where he passed the next twelve years 
of his life. Here he produced, from time to 
time, stories and sketches which found their 
way to the periodicals and won for him a nar- 
row reputation. But the years which a man 
usually devotes to his best work were spent 
by Hawthorne in a contented half-dream of a 



114 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 

great future, for good as is some of the work 
produced at this time, it never would have won 
for the author the highest place in American 
literature. These stories and sketches were 
afterward collected and published under the 
title Twice-Told Tales and The Snow Triage. 
Full of the grace and beauty of Hawthorne's 
style, they were the best imaginative work yet 
produced in America, but in speaking of them 
Hawthorne himself says that in this result of 
twelve years there is little to show for its thought 
and industry. 

But the promise of his genius was fulfilled at 
last. In 1850, when Hawthorne was forty-six 
years old, appeared his first great romance. 
Hawthorne had chosen for his subject a picture 
of Puritan times in New England, and out of the 
tarnished records of the past he created a work 
of art of marvellous and im.perishable beauty. 
In the days of which he wrote, a Puritan town 
v^^as exactly like a large family bound together 
by mutual interests, the acts of each life being 
regarded as affecting the whole community. 
Hawthorne has preserved this spirit of colonial 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 



New England, with all its struggles, hopes, and 
fears, and the- conscience-driven Puritan, who 
lived in the new generation only in public rec- 
ords and church histories, was given new life. 
In Hawthorne's day this grim figure, stalking in 
the midst of Indian fights, village pillories, town- 
meetings, witch - burnings, and church-coun- 
cils was already a memory. With his steeple- 
crowned hat and his matchlock at his side he had 
left the pleasant New-England farm lands and 
was found only in the court-houses, where his 
deeds were recorded. Hawthorne brought him 
back from the past, set him in the midst of his 
fellow-elders in the church, and showed him a 
sufferer for conscience' sake. 

This first romance, published under the title 
The Scarlet Lettei^, revealed to Hawthorne him- 
self, as well as to the world outside, the tran- 
scendent power of his genius. Hawthorne, who 
was despondent of the little popularity of his 
other books, told the publisher who saw the first 
sketch of The Scarlet Letter, that he did not 
know whether the story w^as very good or very 
bad. The publisher, however, at once perceived 



Il6 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 

its worth and brought it out one year from that 
time, and the pubhc saw that it had been enter- 
taining a genius unawares. Hawthorne's next 
book, The House of the Seven Gables, is a story 
of the New England of his own day. A clever 
critic has called it an impression of a summer 
afternoon in an elm -shadowed New -England 
town. Through its pages flit quaint contrasting 
figures that one might find in New England 
and nowhere else. The old spinster of ancient 
family, obliged to open a toy and gingerbread 
shop, but never forgetting the time when the 
house with seven gables was a mansion of limit- 
less hospitality, is a pathetic picture of disap- 
pointed hope and broken-down fortune. So is 
her brother, who was falsely imprisoned for 
twenty years, and who in his old age must lean 
upon his sister for support ; and the other char- 
acters are equally true to the life that has almost 
disappeared in the changes of the half-century 
since its scenes were made the inspiration of 
Hawthorne's romance. 

TJie Hottse of the Seven Gables was followed 
by two beautiful volumes for children, The Won- 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 11/ 

der Book and Taiiglewood Tales. In The Won- 
der Book Hawthorne writes as if he were a child 
himself, so simple is the charm that he weaves 
around these old, old tales. Not content with 
the Greek myths, he created little incidents and 
impossible characters that glance in and out with 
elfin grace. One feels that these were the very 
stories that were told by the centaurs, fauns, and 
satyrs themselves in the shadows of the old 
Attic forests. Here we learn that King Midas 
not only had his palace turned to gold, but that 
his own little daughter. Marigold, a fancy of 
Hawthorne's own, was also converted into the 
same shining metal. We learn, too, the secrets 
of many a hero and god of this realm of fancy 
which had been unsuspected by any other histo- 
rian of their deeds. Every child who reads The 
Wonder Book doubts not that Hawthorne had 
hobnobbed many a moonlit night with Pan and 
Bacchus in their vine - covered grottos by the 
riverside. This dainty, ethereal touch appears 
in all his work for children. 

A like quality gives distinction to his fourth 
great novel, which deals with a man supposed to 



Il8 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 

be a descendant of the old fauns. This creation, 
named Donatello, from his resemblance to the 
celebrated statue of the Marble Faun, is not 
wholly human, although he has human inter- 
ests and feeling. Hawthorne makes Donatello 
ashamed of his pointed ears, though his spirit is 
as wild and untamed as that of his rude ances- 
tors. In this book there is a description of a 
scene where Count Donatello joins in a peasant 
dance around a public fountain. And so vividly 
is his half-human nature here brought out that 
Hawthorne seems to have witnessed somewhere 
the mad revels of the veritable fauns and sa- 
tyrs in the days of their life upon the earth. 
Throughout this story Hawthorne shows the 
same subtle sympathy with uncommon natures, 
the mystery of such souls having the same 
fascination for him that the secrets of the 
earth and air have for the scientist and phil- 
osopher. 

The book coming betv/een The House of 
the Seven Gables and The Marble Fatni is 
called The Blithedale Romance. It is in part 
the record of a period of Hawthorne's life when 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 1 19 

he joined a community which hoped to improve 
the world by combining healthy manual labor 
with intellectual pursuits, and proving that self- 
interest and all differences in rank must be hurt- 
ful to the commonwealth. This little society 
lived in a suburb of Boston, and called their 
association Brook Farm. Each member per- 
formed daily some manual labor on the farm or 
in the house, hours being set aside for study. 
Here Hav/thorne ploughed the fields and joined 
in the amusements, or sat apart while the rest 
talked about art and literature, danced, sang, or 
read Shakespeare aloud. Some of the cleverest 
men and women of New England joined this 
community, the rules of which obliged the men 
to wear plaid blouses and rough straw hats, and 
the women to content themselves with plain 
calico gowns. 

These serious-minded m.en and women, who 
tried to solve a great problem by leading the 
lives of Arcadian shepherds, at length dispersed, 
each one going back to the world and working 
on as bravely as if the experiment had been a 
great success. The experiences of Brook Farm 



120 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 

were shadowed forth in The Blithedale Romance, 
although it was not a literal narrative. 

Immediately after this Hawthorne was married 
and went to live in Concord, near Boston, in a 
quaint old dwelling called The Manse. And as 
all his work partakes of the personal flavor of his 
own life, so his existence here is recorded in a 
delightful series of essays called Mosses from a7i 
Old Manse. Here we have a description of the 
old house itself, and of the author's family life, 
of the kitchen-garden and apple-orchards, of the 
meadows and woods, and of his friendship with 
that lover of nature, Henry Thoreau, whose writ- 
inors form a valuable contribution to American 
literature. The Mosses from an Old Manse 
must ever be famous as the history of the quiet 
hours of one of the greatest American men of 
letters. They are full of Hawthorne's own per- 
sonality, and reveal more than any other of his 
books the depth and purity of his poetic and 
rarely gifted nature. 

In 1853 his old friend and schoolmate, Pres- 
ident Pierce, appointed Hawthorne American 
Consul at Liverpool. He remained abroad 



NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 121 

seven years, spending the last four on the Conti- 
nent, some transcriptions of his experience be- 
ing found in the celebrated Mai^blc Faitn and 
in several volumes of Note-Books. The Mai^ble 
Faun^ published in Europe under the title Trans- 
for?nation, was written in Rome, and w^as partly 
suggested to Hawthorne by an old villa which 
he occupied near Florence. This old villa pos- 
sessed a moss-covered tower, "haunted," as 
Hawthorne said in a letter to a friend, " by owls 
and by the ghost of a monk who was confined 
there in the thirteenth century previous to being 
burnt at the stake in the principal square in 
Florence." He also states in the same letter 
that he meant to put the old castle bodily in a 
romance that was then in his head, which he 
did by making the villa the old family castle of 
Donatello, although the scene of the story is laid 
in Rome. 

After Hawthorne's return to America he 
began two other novels, one founded upon the 
old legend of the elixir of life. This story was 
probably suggested to him by Thoreau, who 
spoke of a house in v/hich Hawthorne once 



122 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 

lived at Concord having been, a century or two 
before, the abode of a man who believed that he 
should never die. This subject was a charming 
one for Hawthorne's peculiar genius, but the 
story, with another. The Dollive?^ Romance, was 
interrupted by the death of Hawthorne in 1864. 
In point of literary art the romances of Haw- 
thorne are the finest work yet done in America, 
and their author was a man of high imagination, 
lofty morality, and pure ideals ; an artist in the 
noblest meaning of the word. 



CHAPTER IX 

GEORGE BANCROFT 

1800-1891 

Seventy years ago the Round Hill School at 
Northampton, Mass., was perhaps the most 
famous school in New England. The founder, 
George Bancroft, had modelled it upon a cele- 
brated school in Switzerland, in the hope that it 
would prove a starting-point for a broader sys- 
tem of elementary training than had yet existed 
in America, and everything was done to develop 
the physical and moral, as well as the mental, 
traits of the pupils. The school was beautifully 
situated, commanding a superb view, and had, 
besides the school-rooms, a gymnasium and pla}^- 
rooms that were kept warm in cold weather and 
furnished with tools for carpentering. Here the 
boys could make bows and arrows, squirrel- 
traps, kites, sleds, and whatever their fancy die- 



124 GEORGE BANCROFT 

tated. There were large play-grounds on the 
slopes of the hiil, and here was the village of 
^'Cronyviile," every house, hut, or shanty in 
which had been built and was owned by the 
boys themselves. There were many varieties of 
architecture in '' Cronyville," but each dweUing 
had at least a large chimney and a small store- 
room. After school hours each shanty was its 
owner's castle, where entertainments were held, 
and the guests feasted with roasted corn, nuts, 
or apples, v/hich the entire company had helped 
to prepare on the hearth of the wide chimney. 
Sometimes the feast was enlivened by recita- 
tions, poems, and addresses by the pupils, among 
whom was at one time the future historian, 
John Lothrop Motley, and very often the festiv- 
ities would end in one of those earnest talks that 
boys fall into sometimes when tired out with 
play. Bancroft's assistant and partner in the 
school was Dr. Cogswell, who superintended the 
course of study, which was carried out by the 
best teachers procurable in America, England, 
and France. The boys were in the main good 
students, some of them brilliant ones, and they 



GEORGE BANCROFT 12$ 

enjoyed so much freedom that their spirits 
gained them sometimes an unenviable reputa- 
tion. The solemn keeper of a certain inn on the 
stage line between Northampton and Boston 
suffered so much from their pranks that he re- 
fused to allow them to stop over night, and only 
consented to give them dinner upon promise of 
good behavior. 

The school became so popular that the best 
families in all parts of the country sent their 
boys there, but, financially, it was not a success, 
and after seven years' trial Bancroft was forced 
to abandon it, though his partner struggled on a 
few years longer. If the experiment had been 
entirely successful the cause of education might 
have been advanced fifty years ahead of the old 
method, for both founders were men devoted to 
the cause of education and longed to see newer 
and broader methods supersede the old ones. 

As a boy Bancroft had studied at the Exeter 
Academy ; finishing his course there he entered 
Harvard at thirteen, was graduated in his seven- 
teenth year, and a year later was sent abroad by 
Harvard to fit himself for a tutorship in the 



1 26 GEORGE BANCROFT 

University. During his four years' absence he 
studied modern languages and literatures, Greek 
philosophy and antiquities, and some natural his- 
tory. But he made history the special object of 
study, and bent all his energies to acquiring as 
wide a knowledge as possible of the sources and 
materials that m^ake up the records of modern 
history. During his vacations he visited the 
different countries of Europe, travelling in regu- 
lar student fashion. He would rise at dawn, 
breakfast by candlelight, and then fill the morn- 
ing with visits to picture galleries, cathedrals, and 
all the wonders of foreign towns ; after a light 
luncheon he would start again on his sight- 
seeing, or visit some person of note, meeting 
during his travels almost every distinguished 
man in Europe. At night, if not too tired, he 
would study still politics, languages, and history, 
and when he returned to America he had made 
such good use of his time that he was equipped 
for almost any position in its intellectual life. 

His obligations to Harvard led him to accept 
a tutorship there, which, however, proved so dis- 
tasteful to him that he only held it one year. It 



GEORGE BANCROFT 12/ 

was after this experience that he founded his 
school at Round Hill. During the years that 
he was trying to make the Round Hill school a 
model for boys' schools, the idea of his work as 
the historian of the United States came to him. 
Undismayed by the scope of the work, which he 
meant should include the history of the United 
States from the time of the landing of Colum- 
bus to the adoption of the Constitution in 1 789, 
Bancroft, month after month, settled the plan 
more definitely in his mind ; and when the time 
came for him to begin the work he only looked 
forward eagerly to the task of writing the records 
of three hundred years of the world's progress 
during the most absorbing period known to his- 
tory. It is doubtful if at this time there was 
any other man living better qualified for this 
task than Bancroft. He had been a student of 
history and politics since boyhood. He had 
traced the stream of history from its sources in 
the East through the rise of the great modern 
nations. He had mastered the politics of the 
ancient world, whose language, literature, and 
art were also familiar to him, and civilized 



128 GEORGE BANCROFT 

Europe had been his field of study during the 
years which leave the most profound impres- 
sions upon the mind. 

To him the rise and establishment of the 
United States as a great nation presented it- 
self as one of the most brilliant passages of 
the world's history, and no labor seemed tire- 
some which should fittingly chronicle that event. 

Besides his literary requirements Bancroft 
possessed eminent qualities for practical life. 
He was successively Governor of Massachusetts, 
Secretary of the Navy, and for a time Acting- 
Secretary of War ; he served his country as 
Minister to Great Britain. He was made Min- 
ister to Prussia and afterw^ard Minister to Ger- 
many when that country took its place as a 
united nation. Some of the most important 
treaties between the United States and foreign 
powers were made during Bancroft's diplomatic 
career, and in every act of his political life 
showed a talent for practical affairs. While 
he was Secretary of the Navy he founded the 
United States Naval Academy at Annapolis. 
Previous to this there was no good system by 



GEORGE BANCROFT 1 29 

which the boys who desired to enter the navy 
could receive instruction in any other branch 
than that of practical seamanship. In the old 
navy the middies were taught, while afloat, by 
the chaplains, who gave them lessons in odd 
hours in writing, arithmetic, and navigation ; if 
the pupils were idle they were reported to the 
captain, whose discipline was far from gentle. 
A boy eager to learn could pick up a great deal 
by asking questions and noticing what was going 
on about him, and sometimes the officers would 
volunteer their help in a difficult subject. Later 
each ship had one regular school-master, who 
made the voyage with the ship, twenty middies 
being appointed to each man-of-war. This sys- 
tem was superseded by schools, which were 
established at the different navy-yards, and 
which the boys attended in the intervals of sea 
duty ; but, as in the case of the other methods, 
the instruction was desultory, and the pupils had 
not the advantage of education enjoyed by the 
cadets of the West Point Military Academy, 
though it was evident the necessity for it was 
the same. 
9 



130 GEORGE BANCROFT 

Bancroft brought to the office of Secretary of 
the Navy his old love for broad principles of 
education, and eight months after he took of- 
fice the United States Naval Academy was in 
full operation, with a corps of instructors of the 
first merit, and with a complement of pupils 
that spoke well for the national interest in the 
cause. At first the course was for five -years, 
the first and last of which only were spent at 
the Academy and the rest at sea, but this 
was later modified to its present form. Ban- 
croft's generous policy placed the new institu- 
tion upon a firm basis, and it became at once a 
vital force in the life of the United States Navy. 

Bancroft began his history while still at Round 
Hill, and published the first volume in 1834. 
Previous to beginning his history he had pub- 
lished a small volume of verse, a Latin Reader, 
and a book on Greek politics for the use of the 
Round Hill School, and various translations 
and miscellaneous writings in the different peri- 
odicals of the day. But none of these had 
seemed serious work to him, and he brought 
to his history a mind fresh to literary labor, and 



GEORGE BANCROFT 131 

a fund of general information that was invalu- 
able. 

While he was minister to Great Britain he 
visited the state archives of England, France, 
and Germany for additional historical material. 
From this time he devoted himself as exclu- 
sively to his work as the diplomatic positions 
he held would allow. 

His official administration in his own country 
was also far-reaching. Besides the establish- 
ment of the Naval Academy, it was he who, 
while acting as Secretary of Y'J^.r pro tern,, gave 
the famous order for General Taylor to move 
forward to the western boundary of Texas, 
which had been annexed to the United States 
after seceding from Mexico and setting up as 
a republic. General Taylor's appearance on 
the borders was the signal to Mexico that the 
United States intended to defend the new ter- 
ritory, and eventually led to the war with Mex- 
ico, by which the United States received the 
territorry of New Mexico and California. 

When the lookout on the Pinta called out 
'' Land ho ! " he really uttered the first word of 



132 GEORGE BANCROFT 

American history, and Bancroft's narrative begins 
almost at this point. The first volume embraces 
the early French and Spanish voyages ; the set- 
tlement of the Colonies ; descriptions of colonial 
life in New England and Virginia; the fall and 
restoration of the house of Stuart in England, 
which led to such important results in Ameri- 
can history, and Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia, 
v/hich was the first note of warning to England 
that the American Colonies would not tolerate 
English injustice without a protest. To the 
reader who loves to find in history facts more 
marvellous than any imaginations of fairy lore, 
the first volume of Bancroft's history must ever 
be a region of delight. The picturesque figure 
of Columbus fronting undismayed the terrors of 
that unknov/n sea, which the geographers of the 
period peopled w4th demons and monsters ; the 
adventures of the French and Spanish courtiers 
in search of fabled rivers and life-giving foun- 
tains ; the trials of the gold-seekers, De Soto, 
Navarez, Cabeca de Vaca, and others, who sought 
for the riches of the romantic East; and the 
heroic suffering of those innumierable bands who 



GEORGE BANCROFT I 33 

first looked upon the wonders of the New World, 
and opened the way to its great career, are such 
stories as are found in the sober history of no 
other country. To the Old World, whose begin- 
nings of history were lost in the mists of the 
past, this vision of the New World, with its beauty 
of mountains, river, and forest, with its inex- 
haustible wealth and its races yet living in the 
primitive conditions of remote antiquity, was 
indeed a Vv^onder hardly to be believed. It is 
something to be present at the birth of a new 
world, and Bancroft has followed the voyagers 
and settlers in their own spirit, made their ad- 
ventures his own, and given to the reader a 
brilliant as well as faithful picture of the historic 
beginning of the American continent. 

In his second volume Bancroft takes up the 
history of the Dutch in America ; of the occu- 
pations of the Valley of the Mississippi by the 
French ; of the expulsion of the French from 
Canada by the English, and the minor events 
which went toward the accomplishment of these 
objects. Here are introduced the romantic story 
of Acadia and the picturesque side of Indian life. 



134 GEORGE BANCROFT 

" The Indian mother places her child, as spring 
does its blossoms, upon the boughs of the trees 
while she works," says Bancroft in describing 
the sleeping-places of the Indian babies, and we 
see the same sympathetic touch throughout his 
descriptions of these dark children of the forest, to 
whom the white man came as a usurper of their 
rights and destroyer of their woodland homes. 

The remaining volumes of the history consist 
almost entirely of the causes which led up to the 
American Revolution, the Revolution itself, and 
its effect upon Europe. One-half of the whole 
work is devoted to this theme, which is treated 
with a philosophical breadth that makes it com- 
parable to the work of the greatest historians. 
Here we are led to see that, besides its influence 
upon the history of the New World, the Ameri- 
can Revolution was one of the greatest events in 
the world's history; that it followed naturally 
from the revolt of the Netherlands against Spain 
and the Revolution of the English people against 
the tyranny of Charles I., and that, like them, its 
highest mission was to vindicate the cause of 
liberty. 



GEORGE BANCROFT I 35 

In two Other volumes, entitled History of 
the Formation of the Constitution of the Uni- 
ted States, Bancroft gave a minute and careful 
description of the consolidation of the States 
into an individual nation after the Revolution, 
and the draughting and adopting of the Consti- 
tution by which they have since been governed. 
This, with some miscellaneous papers, among 
which may be mentioned the dramatic descrip- 
tion of the Battle of Lake Erie, comprise the 
remainder of Bancroft's contribution to Ameri- 
can literature. 

Bancroft said that there were three qualities 
necessary to the historian : A knowledge of the 
evil in human nature; that events are subordinate 
to law, and that there is in man something greater 
than himself. To these qualifications, which he 
himself eminently possessed, may be added that 
of untiring industry, which distinguished his 
work. A passage was written over and over 
again, sometimes as many as eight times, until 
it suited him. And he was known to write an 
entire volume over. He carried his labor into 
his old age, being eighty-four years of age when 



136 GEORGE BANCROFT 

he made the last revision of the history which 
had occupied fifty years of his life. 

His diplomatic career also extended over many 
years, he being seventy-four when at his own 
request the Government recalled him from the 
Court of Berlin where he was serving as Min- 
ister. 

Bancroft died in 1891, in his ninety-second 
year. The most famous of his own countrymen 
united in tributes to his memory, and the sover- 
eigns of Europe sent wreaths to place upon his 
coffin. As historian, diplomatist, and private 
citizen, he had honored his country as is the 
privilege of few. 



CHAPTER X 

EDGAR ALLAN POE 

1809-1849 

In the play-ground of an old-fashioned Eng- 
lish school the boy Edgar Allan Poe, then in 
his ninth year, first entered that world of day- 
dreams, whose wonders he afterward transcribed 
so beautifully in his prose and poetry. The 
school was situated in the old town of Stoke 
Newington, and the quaint, sleepy village, with 
its avenues shaded by ancient trees and bordered 
by fragrant shrubberies, aiid with its country 
stillness broken only by the chime of the church- 
bell tolling the hour, seemed to the boy hardly a 
part of the real world. In describing it in after 
years he speaks of the dream-like and soothing 
influence it had upon his early life. The school 
building, also the village parsonage, as the mas- 
ter of the school was a clergyman, had a similar 



138 EDGAR ALLAN POE 

effect ; it was a large, rambling house, whose 
passages and rooms had a labyrinthine irregu- 
larity which charmed the young student and 
made him regard it almost as a place of enchant- 
ment. It had many nooks and corners in which 
one might lose one's self and dream day-dreams 
out of the books, poetry and history, with which 
it was pretty well stocked. The school-room 
itself was low-walled and ceiled with oak, and 
filled with desks and benches that had been 
hacked and hewed by generations of boys. It 
was of great size, and seemed to Poe the largest 
in the world. In this room he studied mathe- 
matics and the classics, while in the play-ground 
outside, which was surrounded by brick walls 
topped with mortar and broken glass, he spent 
many of his leisure hours, taking part in those 
sports so loved by the English school-boy. The 
boys were allowed beyond the grounds only 
three times in a week ; twice on Sunday, when 
they went to church, and once during the week, 
when, guarded by two ushers, they were taken 
a solemn walk through the neighboring fields. 
All the rest of life lay within the walls that sep- 



EDGAR ALLAN POE I 39 

arated the school from the village streets. In 
this quiet spot Poe spent five years of his life, 
speaking of them afterward as most happy years 
and rich in those poetic influences which formed 
his character. 

In his thirteenth year he left England and re- 
turned to America with his adopted parents, 
Mr. and Mrs. Allan, of Baltimore, spending the 
next four or five years of his life partly in their 
beautiful home and partly at school in Rich- 
mond. 

The parents of Poe had died in his infancy. 
They had both possessed talent, his mother hav- 
ing been an actress of considerable repute, and 
from them he inherited gentle and winning 
manners and a talent for declamation, which, 
combined with his remarkable personal beauty, 
made him a favorite in the Allan home, where 
he was much petted and caressed. The child 
returned the interest of his adopted parents, and 
though he was sometimes wilful and obstinate 
he never failed in affection. To Mrs. Allan 
especially he always showed a devotion and 
gratitude that well repaid her for the love 



I40 EDGAR ALLAN POE 

and care she had bestowed upon the orphan 
child. 

Though fond of books, especially books of 
poetry, and loving to be alone in some quiet 
place where he could indulge in the day-dreams 
that formed so large a part of his life, Poe yet 
had the fondness of a healthy boy for athletic 
sports, and some of his feats of strength are still 
found recorded in the old newspapers of Balti- 
more. Once on a hot day he swam a distance 
of seven miles on the James River against a 
svv^ift tide ; in a contest he leaped twenty-one 
feet on a level, and in other feats of strength he 
also excelled. 

He was very fond of animals, and was always 
surrounded by pets which returned his affection 
with interest, and v/hich, wath the flowers he 
loved to tend and care for, took up many of his 
leisure hours. 

When he was seventeen Poe entered the Uni- 
versity of Virginia, where he remained not quite 
a year, distinguishing himself as a student of the 
classics and modern languages. Upon his re- 
turn to Baltimore he had a disagreement with 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 141 

his foster-father because of some college debts, 
and though Poe was very much in the wrong he 
refused to admit it, and, leaving the house in a 
fit of anger, went to live with his aunt, Mrs. 
Clemm. He had already published a volume of 
poems, and now being forced to depend upon 
himself he issued a second edition. But this 
brought him neither fame nor money, and after 
a two years' struggle with poverty he was glad 
to accept a cadetship at West Point, obtained 
for him through the influence of Mr. Allan. 
Mrs. Allan had in the meantime died, and in 
her death Poe lost his best friend, one who had 
been ever ready to forgive his faults, to believe 
in his repentance, and to have faith in his prom- 
ises of amendment. 

Poe v/as charmed with the life at West Point, 
and in his first enthusiasm decided that a sol- 
dier's career was the most glorious in the world. 
The hard study, the strict discipline, the rigid 
law and order of cadet life seemed only admira- 
ble, and he soon stood at the head of his class. 
But it was impossible that this enthusiasm 
should last long. Poe v/as endowed by nature 



142 EDGAR ALLAN POE 

with the dreamy and artistic temperament of 
the poet, and discipHne and routine could not 
fail to become in a short time unbearable. 
When this period arrived the prospective life of 
the soldier lost its charm, and he was seized 
with a desire to leave the Academy and bid a 
final farewell to military life. It was impossi- 
ble to do this without the consent of his guar- 
dian, and as Mr. Allan refused this, Poe was 
forced to carry his point in his own way. This 
he did by lagging in his studies, writing poetry 
when he should have been solving problems, 
and refusing point blank to obey orders. Mili- 
tary discipline could not long brook this. Poe 
was court-martialed, and, pleading guilty, was 
discharged from the Academy, disgraced but 
happy. During his stay there he had published 
a third edition of his poems, containing a num- 
ber of pieces not included in the other editions. 
It was dedicated to his fellow-cadets, and was 
subscribed for by many of the students. 

Almost immediately after his departure from 
West Point, Poe went to live with his aunt, 
Mrs. Clemm, and her daughter Virginia, who 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 143 

afterward became his wife ; and from this time 
forward he never seems to have had any serious 
idea of a career otherwise than literary. In 
1832, when he was in his twenty-fourth year, 
prizes were offered by a Baltimore paper for the 
best short story and best poem that should be 
presented. Among the material offered in com- 
petition the judges found a sm.all collection of 
tales bound together, and written in neat Roman 
characters. These stories were the last ones 
read by the committee which had about decided 
that there had been nothing oft^ered worthy the 
prize ; their unmistakable signs of genius were 
instantly recognized. It was decided that the 
prize of one hundred dollars belonged to this 
author, and out of the series the story entitled 
A Maniisc7Hpt Foicnd in a Bottle was selected 
as the prize tale, though all were so excellent 
that it was difficult to determine which was best. 
This little volume had been submitted by Poe, 
and when the poetry came to be examined it 
was found also that the best poem in the collec- 
tion was his. He was not, however, awarded 
the prize for poetry, that being given to another 



144 EDGAR ALLAN POE 

competitor, whose work the committee thought 
worthy the second prize, in view of the fact that 
Poe had obtained the first. 

It was in this manner that Poe was intro- 
duced to the world of hterature, his previous 
productions having excited no attention other 
than that generally given to the work of a clever 
or erratic boy. The workmanship of these stories 
v/as so fine and the genius so apparent as to give 
them a distinct place in American fiction, a 
place to which at that time the promise of Haw- 
thorne pointed. Besides the reputation and 
money thus earned, the story brought him a 
stanch friend in the person of Mr. Kennedy, 
one of the members of the committee, who, 
from that time, was devoted to the interests of 
the young author. 

Poe now became busy with the composition 
of those beautiful tales which appeared from 
time to time in the periodicals of the day, and 
which speedily won him a reputation both in 
America and Europe. Fie was also employed 
in editorial work for different magazines, and 
became known as the first American critic who 



EDGAR ALLAN POE 145 

had made criticism an art. It was his dream at 
this time to establish a magazine of his own, 
and for many years one project after another 
with this object in view was tried and aban- 
doned. He was never able to start the maga- 
zine and felt the disappointment keenly always. 
Through all his disappointments he still lived 
much in that dream-world which had always 
been so real to him, and much of his best work 
found there its inspiration. His exquisite story 
of Ligeia came to him first in a dream. This 
world, so unreal to many, was to Poe as real as 
his actual life. Like Coleridge in English lit- 
erature, he had the power of presenting the 
visions which came to him in sleep or in his 
waking dreams, surrounded by their own at- 
mosphere of mystery and unreality, thus pro- 
ducing an effect which avv^ed as well as fas- 
cinated. No other American writer has ever 
brought from the dream-world such beautiful 
creations, which charm and mystify at the same 
time, and force the most unimaginative reader 
to beheve for the time in the existence of this 
elusive realm of faery. 



146 EDGAR ALLAN POE 

Poe's poems have this same character, and 
found their inspiration in the same somxe. 
While enoraored in editorial work in New York 

o o 

Poe wrote his first great poem, The Raven, 
which was first published under an assumed 
name. It was not until he recited the poem by 
request at a gathering of the literary workers of 
New York that his authorship was suspected. 
Immediately afterward the poem was published 
under his name. It was regarded by critics in 
England and America as illustrating the highest 
poetic genius. From this time Poe, who had 
hitherto been ranked among the best prose writ- 
ers of his native land, now took precedence 
among the poets. It is, indeed, as a poet that 
he is always thought of first. It was during the 
next five years after the publication of The 
Raven that he produced the series of remarkable 
poems that has given him immortality. The 
Bells, the original draft of which consisted of 
only eighteen lines, is, perhaps, next to The 
Raven, the poem that has brought him the most 
fame. But the number of exquisite shorter 
poems which he produced would in themselves 



EDGAR ALLAN POE I47 

give him the highest rank as a poet. Chief 
among these is the Httle idyll, Annabel Lee, a 
transcription of the ideal love which existed be- 
tween Poe and his young wife. 

While engaged in literary work in New York 
Poe lived for the greater part of the time in the 
suburb of Fordham, in an unpretentious but 
charming cottage, bowered in trees and sur- 
rounded by the flower garden, which was the 
especial pride of the poet and his wife. Perhaps 
the happiest days of his life were spent in this 
quiet place, to which he would retire after the 
business of the day was over, and occupy him- 
self with the care of the flowers and of the nu- 
merous pet birds and animals, which were re- 
garded as a part of the family. 

Over this otherwise happy existence hung 
always the clouds of poverty and sickness, his 
wife having been an invalid for many years. It 
was in this little cottage, at a time when Poe's 
fortunes were at their lowest ebb, that his w^ife 
died amid poverty so extreme that the family 
could not even afford a fire to heat the room in 
which she lay dying. Poe remained at Ford- 



148 EDGAR ALLAN POE 

ham a little over two years after his wife's death, 
leaving it only a few months before his ov/n 
death, in October, 1849. 

Poe is undoubtedly to be ranked among the 
greatest writers of American literature. His 
prose works would grace any literary period ; 
his poetry is alive with the fire and beauty of 
genius, and his criticisms marked a new era in 
critical writing in America. 

Twenty-six years after his death a monument 
was erected to his memory in the city of Balti- 
more, mainly through the efforts of the teachers 
of the public schools. Some of the most dis- 
tinguished men of America were present at the 
unveiling to do honor to the poet whose work 
was such a noble contribution to the art of his 
native land. 



CHAPTER XI 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
I 803-1 S8 2 

Walking the streets of Boston, in the days 
when old-fashioned gambrel-roofed houses and 
gardens filled the space now occupied by dingy 
warehouses, might be seen a serious-eyed boy 
who, whether at work or at play, seemed always 
to his companions to live in a world a little dif- 
ferent from their own. This was not the dream- 
world so familiar to childhood, but another 
which few children enter, and those only who 
seem destined to be teachers of their race. One 
enters this world just as the world of day-dreams 
is entei:ed, by forgetting the real world for a 
time and lettina^ the mind think what thouo^hts 
it will. In this world Milton spent many long 
hours when a child, and Bunyan made immor- 
tal in literature the memory of these dreams of 



ISO RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

youth. Never any thought of the real world en- 
ters this place, whose visitors see but one thing, a 
vision of the soul as it journeys through life. To 
Bunyan this seemed but a journey over danger- 
ous roads, through lonely valleys, and over steep 
mountain sides ; to Milton it seemed a war be- 
tween good and evil ; to this little New-England 
boy it seemed but a vision of duty bravely accom- 
plished, and in this he was true to the instincts 
of that Puritan race to which he belonged. The 
boy's father was the Rev. William Emerson, 
pastor of the First Church in Boston, who had 
died when this son, Ralph Waldo, was in his 
ninth year ; but for three years longer the family 
continued to reside in the quaint old parson- 
age, in which Emerson had been born. The 
father had left his family so poor that the con- 
gregation of the First Church voted an annuity 
of five hundred dollars to the widow for seven 
years, and many were the straits the little family 
was put to in order to eke out a comfortable 
living. The one ambition was to have the three 
boys educated. An aunt who lived in the fam- 
ily declared that they were born to be educated, 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 15I 

and that it must be brought about somehow. 
The mother took boarders, and the two eldest 
boys, Ralph and Edward, helped do the house- 
Vv'ork. In a little letter written to his aunt, in 
his tenth year, Ralph mentions that he rose be- 
fore six in the morning in order to help his 
brother make the fire and set the table for 
prayers before calling his mother — so early did 
the child realize that he must be the burden- 
sharer of the family. Poverty there was, but 
also much happiness in the old parsonage, whose 
dooryard of trees and shrubs, joined on to the 
neighboring gardens, made a pleasant outlook 
into the world. When school work was over, and 
household duty disposed of, very often the broth- 
ers would retire to their own room and there 
find their own pecuHar joy in reading tales of Plu- 
tarch, reciting poetry, and declaiming some favor- 
ite piece, for solitude was loved by all, and the 
great authors of the world were well studied by 
these boys, whose bedchamber was so cold that 
Plato or Cicero could only be indulged in when 
the reader was wrapped so closely in his cloak 
that Emerson afterward remarked, thg smell of 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 



woollen was forever afterward associated with the 
Greek classics. Ralph attended the Latin Gram- 
mar School, and had private lessons besides in 
writing, which he seems to have acquired with 
difficulty, one of his school-fellows telling long 
afterward how his tongue moved up and down 
as the pen laboriously traversed the page, and 
how on one occasion he even played truant to 
avoid the dreaded task, for which misdemeanor 
he was promptly punished by a diet of bread and 
water. It was at this period that he wrote 
verses on the War of 1812, and began an epic 
poem which one of his school friends illustrated. 
Such skill did he attain in verse-making that his 
efforts were delivered on exhibition days, being 
rendered with such impressiveness by the young 
author that his mates considered nothing could 
be finer. 

From the Latin school Emerson passed to| 
Harvard in his fifteenth year, entering as ■■ Presi- 
dent's Freshman," a post which brought with it 
a certain annual sum and a remission of fees in 
exchange for various duties, such as summoning 
unruly students to the president, announcing the 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1 53 

orders of the faculty, and serving as waiter at 
commons. 

At college Emerson was noted as a student 
more familiar with general literature than with 
the college text-books, and he was an ardent 
member of a little book club which met to read 
and discuss current literature, the book or maga- 
zine under discussion being generally bought by 
the member who had the most pocket-money at 
the time. But in spite of a dislike for routine 
study, Emerson was graduated with considerable 
honor, and almost immediately afterward set 
about the business of school-teaching. 

But Emerson was not able to take kindly to 
teaching, and in his twenty-first year began prep- 
arations to enter the ministry. These were in- 
terrupted for a while by a trip South in search 
of health, but he was finally able to accept a posi- 
tion as assistant minister at the Second Church. 
A year or two later he was 'again obliged to 
leave his work and go abroad for his health. 
After he returned home he decided to leave the 
ministry, and he began that series of lectures 
which speedily made him famous and which 



154 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

have determined his place in American litera- 
ture. 

From this time Emerson began to be recog- 
nized as one of the thought-leaders of his age. To 
him literature appealed as a means of teaching 
those spiritual lessons that brace the soul to brave 
endurance. While Hawthorne was living in the 
world of romance, Poe and Lowell creating 
American poetry, and Bancroft and Motley plac- 
ing American historical prose on the highest level, 
Emerson was throwing his genius into the form 
of moral essays for the guidance of conduct. To 
him had been revealed in all its purity that vision 
of the perfect life which had been the inspiration 
of his Puritan ancestors. And with the vision 
had come that gift of expression which enabled 
him to preserve it in the noblest literary form. 
These essays embrace every variety of subject, 
for, to a philosopher like Emerson every form of 
life and every object of nature represented some 
picture of the soul. When he devoted himself 
to this task he followed a true light, for he 
became and remains to many the inspiration 
of his age, the American writer above all oth- 



RALPH WALDO EMERSON 1 55 

ers whose thought has moulded the souls of 
men. 

Much of Emerson's work found form in verse 
of noble vein, for he was a poet as well as phi- 
losopher. He also was connected with one or 
two magazines, and became one of the most pop- 
ular of American lecturers ; with the exception 
of several visits to Europe and the time given to 
his lecturing and other short trips, Emerson spent 
his life at Concord, Mass. To this place came 
annually, in his later years, the most gifted of his 
followers, to conduct what was known as the 
Concord School of Philosophy. Throughout 
his whole life Emerson preserved that serenity 
of soul which is the treasure of such spiritually 
gifted natures. 

He died at Concord in 1882, and was buried 
in the village cemetery, which he had consecrated 
thirty years before. 



CHAPTER XII 

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

1807-1882 

Almost any summer day in the early part of 
the century a blue-eyed, brown-haired boy might 
have been seen lying under a great apple-tree in 
the garden of an old house in Portland, forget- 
ful of everything else in the world save the book 
he was reading. 

The boy was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 
and the book might have been Robiiison Crusoe, 
The Arabiaji Nights, or Doit Qttixote, all of 
which were prime favorites, or, possibly, it was 
Irving's Sketch-Book, of which he was so fond 
that even the covers delighted him, and whose 
charm remained unbroken throughout life. 
Years afterward, when, as a famous man of let- 
ters, he was called upon to pay his tribute to the 
memory of Irving, he could think of no more 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW I 5/ 

tender praise than to speak with grateful affec- 
tion of the book which had so fascinated him as 
a boy, and whose pages still led him back into 
the '' haunted chambers of youth." 

Portland was in those days a town of wooden 
houses, with streets shaded with trees, and the 
waters of the sea almost dashing up to its door- 
ways. At its back great stretches of woodland 
swept the country as far as the eye could see, and 
low hills served as watch-towers over the deep in 
times of war. It was during Longfellow's child- 
hood that the British ship Boxer was captured 
by the Enterprise in the famous sea-fight of the 
War of 1 8 1 2 ; the two captains, who had fallen 
in the battle, were buried side by side in the 
cemetery at Portland, and the whole town came 
together to do honor to the dead commanders. 
Long afterward Longfellow speaks of this in- 
cident in his poem entitled My Lost Youth, 
and recalls the sound of the cannon booming 
across the waters, and the solemn stillness that 
followed the news of the victory. 

It is in the same poem that we have a picture 
of the Portland of his early life, and are given 



158 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

glimpses of the black wet wharves, where the 
ships were moored all day long as they worked, 
and also the Spanish sailors '' with bearded lips " 
who seemed as much a mystery to the boy as the 
ships themselves. These came and went across the 
sea, always watched and waited for with greatest 
interest by the children, who loved the excite- 
ment of the unloading and loading, the shouts of 
the surveyors who were measuring the contents 
of cask and hogshead ; the songs of the negroes 
working the pulleys, the jolly good-nature of the 
seamen strolling through the streets, and, above 
all, the sight of the strange treasures that came 
from time to time into one home or another — bits 
of coral, beautiful sea-shells, birds of resplendent 
plumage, foreign coins, which looked odd even 
in Portland, where all the money nearly was 
Spanish — and the hundred and one things dear 
to the hearts of children and sailors. 

Longfellow's boyhood was almost a reproduc- 
tion of that of some Puritan ancestor a century 
before. He attended the village school, played 
ball in summer and skated in winter, went to 
church twice every Sunday, and, when service w^as 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW I 59 

over, looked at the curious pictures in the family 
Bible, and heard from his mother's lips the stories 
of David and Jonathan and Joseph, and at all 
times had food for his imagination in the view 
of bay stretching seaward, on one hand, and on 
the other valley farms and groves spreading out 
to the west. 

But although the life was severe in its sim- 
plicity, it was most sweet and wholesome for the 
children who grew up in the home nest, guarded 
by the love that was felt rather than expressed, 
and guided into noble conceptions of the beauty 
and dignity of living. This home atmosphere 
impressed itself upon Longfellow unconsciously, 
as did the poetic influences of nature, and had 
just as lasting and inspiring an effect upon his 
character, so that truth, duty, fine courage v/ere 
always associated with the freshness of spring, the 
early dawn, the summer sunshine, and the linger- 
ing sadness of twilight. 

It is the spiritual insight, thus early developed, 
that gives to Longfellow's poetry some of its 
greatest charms. 

It was during his school-boy days that Long- 



l6o HENRY WADSWORTtI LONGFELLOW 

fellow published his first bit of verse. It was 
inspired by hearing the story of a famous fight 
which took place on the shores of a small lake 
called Lovell's Pond, between the hero Lovell 
and the Indians. Longfellow was deeply im- 
pressed by this story and threw^ his feeling of ad- 
miration into four stanzas, which he carried with 
a beating heart down to the letter-box of the 
Portland Gazette, taking an opportunity to slip 
the manuscript in when no one was looking. 

A few days later Longfellow watched his father 
unfold the paper, read it slowly before the fire, 
and finally leave the room, when the sheet was 
grasped by the boy and his sister,- who shared his 
confidence, and hastily scanned. The poem w^as 
there in the *' Poets' Corner" of the Gazette, and 
Longfellow was so filled with joy that he spent 
the greater part of the remainder of the day in 
reading and re-reading the verses, becoming con- 
vinced toward evening that they possessed re- 
markable merit. His happiness was dimmed, 
however, a few hours later, when the father 
of a boy friend, with whom he was passing the 
evening, pronounced the verses stiff and entirely 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW i6t 

lacking in originality, a criticism that was quite 
true and that was harder to bear because the 
critic had no idea who the author was. Lons^- 
fellow slipped away as soon as possible to nurse 
his wounded feelings in his own room, but in- 
stead of letting the incident discourage him, 
began, with renewed vigor, to write verses, epi- 
grams, essays, and even tragedies, which he pro- 
duced in a literary partnership with one of his 
friends. None of these effusions had any liter- 
ary value, being no better than any boy of thir- 
teen or fourteen would produce if he turned his 
attention to composition instead of bat and ball. 

Longfellow remained in Portland until his 
sixteenth year, when he went to Bowdoin Col- 
lege, entering the sophomore class. Here he 
remained for three years, gradually winning a 
name for scholarship and character that was 
second to none. 

His love for reading still continued, Irving re- 
maining a favorite author, while Cooper was also 
warmly appreciated. From the Sketch-Book he 
would turn to the exciting pages of The Spy, 
and the announcement of a new w^ork by either 



1 62 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

of their authors was looked forward to as an 
event of supreme importance. From time to 
time he wrote verses which appeared in the 
periodicals of the day, and as his college life 
neared its close he began to look toward litera- 
ture as the field for his future work, and it was 
with much disappointment that he learned that 
his father wished him to study law. 

But what the effect of such a course may have 
had upon his mind so filled with the love of 
poetry, and so consecrated to the ideal, will 
never be known, as the end of his college life 
brought to him a chance which, for the mo- 
ment, entirely satisfied the desire of his heart. 

This was an offer from the college trustees 
that he should visit Europe for the purpose 
of fitting himself for a professorship of mod- 
ern languages, and that upon his return he 
should fill that chair, newly established at Bow- 
doin. 

This was the happiest fortune that could 
come to Longfellow in the beginning of his 
literary career. Accordingly, at the age of 
nineteen, he sailed for France in good health, 



HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW 1 63 

with fine prospects, and with as fair a hope for 
the future as ever was given. 

Longfellow remained abroad three years, 
studying and absorbing all the new conditions 
which were broadening his mind, and fitting him 
for his after-career. He visited France, Spain, 
Italy, and Germany, meeting with adventure 
everywhere, and storing up memory after mem- 
ory that came back to his call in after-years to 
serve some purpose of his art. 

We have thus preserved in his works the im- 
pressions that Europe then made upon a young 
American, who had come there to supplement 
his education by studying at the universities, 
and whose mind was alive to all the myriad 
forms of culture denied in his own land. 

The vividness of these early impressions was 
seen in all his work, and was perhaps the first 
reflection of the old poetic European influence 
that began to be felt in much American poetry, 
where the charm of old peasant love-songs and 
roundelays, heard for centuries among the lower 
classes of Spain, France, and Italy, was wrought 
into translations and transcriptions so perfect 



164 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW 

and spirited that they may almost rank with 
original work. 

One of Longfellow's great pleasures while on 
this trip was the meeting with Irving in Spain, 
where the latter was busy upon his Life of Co- 
lumbus ; and Irving's kindness on this occasion 
was always affectionately remembered. 

Longfellow returned to America after three 
years' absence, and at once began his duties at 
Bowdoin College, where he remained three 
years, when he left to take a professorship at 
Harvard, which he had accepted with the under- 
standing that he was to spend a year and a half 
abroad before commencing his work. 

The results of his literary labors while at 
Bowdoin were the publication of a series of 
sketches of European life called Outre Mer, 
in two volumes ; a translation from the Spanish 
of the Coplas de Maiirique, and some essays 
in the North Ainerican Reviezu and other peri- 
odicals. And considering the demand upon his 
time which his college duties made, this amount 
of finished work speaks well for his industry, 
since it does not include a number of text-books 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 16$ 

prepared for the use of his pupils, and number- 
less papers, translations, and other literary mis- 
cellany necessary to his work as a teacher of 
foreign languages. OiUrc Mcr, which had 
first appeared in part in a periodical, was very 
favorably received. It was really the story of 
picturesque Europe translated by the eye and 
heart of a young poet. 

After his return to America Longfellow set- 
tled down to the routine of college work, which 
was interrupted for the next ten years only by his 
literary work, which from this time on began to 
absorb him more and more. Two years after his 
return he published his first volume of poems and 
his romance HypeiHon. In Hyperion Longfel- 
low related some of the experiences of his own 
travels under the guise of the hero, who wanders 
through Europe, and the book is full of the 
same biographical charm that belongs to Outre 
Mer. Here the student life of the German 
youth, the songs they sang, the books they read, 
and even their favorite inns are noted, while 
the many translations of German poetry opened 
a new field of delight to American readers. It 



l66 HENRY VVADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

was well received by the public, who appre- 
ciated its fine poetic fancy and its wealth of 
serious thought. 

But it was not by his prose that Longfel- 
low touched the deepest sympathies of his read- 
ers, and the publication of his first volume 
of poetry a few months later showed his real 
position in the world of American letters. This 
little book, which was issued under the title 
Voices of the Night, consisted of the poems 
that had so far appeared in the various maga- 
zines and papers, a few poems written in his 
college days, and some translations from the 
French, German, and Spanish poets. 

In this volume occurs some of Longfellow's 
choicest works, the gem of the book being the 
celebrated A Psalm of Life. 

It is from this point that Longfellow goes on- 
ward always as the favorite poet of the Ameri- 
can people. The Psalm of Life had been pub- 
lished previously in a magazine without the 
author's name, and it had no sooner been read 
than it seemed to find its way into every heart. 
Ministers read it to their congregations all over 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 167 

the country, and it was sung as a hymn in many 
churches. It was copied in ahnost every news- 
paper in the United States ; it was recited in 
every school. To young and old alike it brought 
its message, and its voice was recognized as that 
of a true leader. The author of Oittre Mer 
and Hyperio7i had here touched hands with 
millions of his brothers and sisters, and the clasp 
was never unloosened again while he lived. 

In the same collection occurs The Footsteps 
of Angels, another well-beloved poem, and one 
in which the spirit of home-life is made the in- 
spiration. 

Longfellow's poems now followed one another 
in rapid succession, appearing generally at first 
in some magazine and afterward in book form 
in various collections under different titles. 

His greatest contributions to American liter- 
ature are his Evangeli7ie and Hiawatha, and a 
score of shorter poems, which in themselves 
would give the author a high place in any liter- 
ature. 

In Evangeline Longfellow took for his theme 
the pathetic story of the destruction of the 



1 68 HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW 

Acadian villages by the English during the strug- 
gle between the English and French for the pos- 
session of Canada. In this event many families 
and friends were separated never again to be re- 
united, and the story of Evangeline is the fate 
of two young lovers who were sent aw^ay from 
their homes in different ships, and who never 
met again until both were old, and one was 
dying in the ward of a public hospital. Long- 
fellow has made of this sad story a wondrously 
beautiful tale, that reads like an old legend of 
Grecian Arcadia. 

The description of the great primeval forests, 
stretching down to the sea ; of the villages and 
farms scattered over the land as unprotected as 
the nests of the meadow lark ; of the sowing 
and harvesting of the peasant folk, with their 
fetes and churchgoing, their weddings and fes- 
tivals, and the pathetic search of Evangeline for 
her lost lover Gabriel among the plains of 
Louisiana, all show Longfellow in his finest 
mood as a poet w^hom the sorrows of mankind 
touched always with reverent pity, as well as a 
writer of noble verse. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 1 69 



Everywhere that the English language is read 
Evangeline has passed as the most beautiful folk- 
story that America has produced, and the French 
Canadians, the far-away brothers of the Aca- 
dians, have included Longfellow among their 
national poets. Among them Evangeline is 
known by heart, and the cases are not rare 
where the people have learned English expressly 
for the purpose of reading Longfellow's poem in 
the original, a wonderful tribute to the poet who 
could thus touch to music one of the saddest 
memories of their race. 

In Hiawatha Longfellow gave to the Indian 
the place in poetry that had been given him by 
Cooper in prose. Here the red man is shown 
with all his native nobleness still unmarred by 
the selfish injustice of the whites, while his in- 
ferior qualities are seen only to be those that 
belong to mankind in general. 

Hiawatha is a poem of the forests and of the 
dark-skinned race who dwelt therein, who were 
learned only in forest lore and lived as near to 
nature's heart as the fauns and satyrs of old. 
Into this legend Longfellow has put all the 



I/O IlENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 



poetry of the Indian nature, and has made his 
hero, Hiawatha, a noble creation that compares 
favorably with the King Arthur of the old 
British romances. Like Arthur, Hiawatha has 
come into the world with a mission for his peo- 
ple ; his birth is equally mysterious and invests 
him at once with almost supernatural qualities. 
Like Arthur, he seeks to redeem his kingdom 
from savagery and to teach the blessing of peace. 
From first to last Hiawatha moves among 
the people, a real leader, showing them how to 
clear their forests, to plant grain, to make for 
themselves clothing of embroidered and painted 
skins, to improve their fishing-grounds, and to 
live at peace with then neighbors. Hiawatha's 
own life was one that was lived for others. 
From the time when he was a little child and 
his grandmother told him all the fairy-tales of 
nature, up to the day when, like Arthur, he 
passed mysteriously away through the gates of 
the sunset, all his hope and joy and work were 
for his people. He is a creature that could only 
have been born from a mind as pure and poetic 
as that of Longfellow. 



HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW I7I 



All the scenes and images of the poem are so 
true to nature that they seem like very breaths 
from the forest. We move with Hiawatha 
through the dewy birchen aisles, learn with him 
the language of the nimble squirrel and of the 
wise beaver and mighty bear, watch him build 
his famous canoe, and spend hours with him 
fishing in the waters of the great inland sea, 
bordered by the pictured rocks, painted by nat- 
ure herself. Longfellow's first idea of the poem 
was suggested, it is said, by his hearing a Har- 
vard student recite some Indian tales. Search- 
ing among the various books that treated of the 
American Indian, he found many legends and 
incidents that preserved fairly well the tradi- 
tional history of the Indian race, and grouping 
these around one central figure and filling in the 
gaps with poetic descriptions of the forests, 
mountains, lakes, rivers, and plains, which made 
up the abode of these picturesque people, he 
thus built up the entire poem. The metre used 
is that in which the Kalevala, the national epic 
of the Finns is written, and the Finnish hero, 
Wainamoinen, in his gift of song and his brave 



172 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 

adventures, is not unlike the great Hiawatha. 
Among Longfellow's other long poems are : 
The Spanish Student, a dramatic poem founded 
upon a Spanish romance ; The Divine Tragedy, 
and The Golden Legend, founded upon the life 
of Christ ; TJie Courtship of Miles Standish, 
a tale of Puritan love-making in the time of 
the early settlers, and Tales of a Wayside Inn, 
which were a series of poems of adventure sup- 
posed to be related in turn by the guests at an 
inn. 

But it is with such poems as Evangeli^ie and 
Hiaioatha, and the shorter famous poems like A 
Psalm of Life, Excelsior, The Wreck of the Hes- 
perus, The B^tilding of the Ship, The Footsteps 
of Angels that his claim as the favorite poet 
of America rests. Evangeline and Hiawatha 
marked an era in American literature in intro- 
ducing themes purely American, while of the 
farhous shorter poems each separate one was 
greeted almost with an ovation. The Building 
of the Ship was never read during the struggle 
of the Civil War without raising the audience 
to a passion of enthusiasm, and so in each of 



HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW 1/3 



these shorter poems Longfellow touched with 
wondrous sympathy the hearts of his readers. 
Throughout the land he was revered as the poet 
of the home and heart, the sweet singer to 
whom the fireside and family gave ever sacred 
and beautiful meanings. 

Some poems on slavery, a prose tale called 
Kavanagh, and a translation of The Divine 
Comedy of Dante must also be included among 
Longfellow's works ; but these have never 
reached the success attained by his more popu- 
lar poems which are known by heart by mill- 
ions to whom they have been inspiration and 
comfort. 

Longfello\v died in Cambridge in 1882, in 
the same month in which was written his last 
poem, The Bells of San Bias, wiiich concludes 
with these words : 

♦• It is daybreak everywhere." , 



CHAPTER XIII 

JOHN LOTIIROP MOTLEY 
1S14-1877 

One day in the year 1827, a boy of thirteen first 
entered the chapel of Harvard College to take 
his seat there as a student. His schoolfellows 
looked at him curiously first, because of his re- 
markable beauty, an. second because of his rep- 
utation as a linguist, a great distinction among 
boys who looked upon foreign tongues as so 
many traps for tripping their unlucky feet in the 
thorny paths of learning. He had come to Har- 
vard from Mr. Bancroft's school at Northamp- 
ton, where he was famous as a reader, writer, 
and orator, and was more admired, perhaps, than 
is good for any boy. Both pupils and masters 
recoQ^nized his talents and overlooked his lack of 
industry. But neither dreamed that their praise 



JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 1 75 

was but the first tribute to the genius of the 
future historian, John Lothrop Motley. 

Motley was born in Dorchester, a suburb of 
Boston, April 15, 1 8 14. As a child he was del- 
icate, a condition which fostered his great natural 
love for reading. He devoured books of every 
kind, history, poetry, plays, orations, and partic- 
ularly the novels of Cooper and Scott. Not sat- 
isfied with reading about heroes, he must be a 
hero himself, and when scarcely eight he bribed 
a younger brother wich sweetmeats to lie quiet, 
wrapped in a shawl, while he, mounted upon a 
stool, delivered Mark Antony's oration over the 
dead body of Ceesar. At eleven he began a 
novel, the scene of which was laid in the Housa- 
tonic Valley, because that name sounded grand 
and romantic. On Saturday afternoon he and 
his playmates, among whom was Wendell Phil- 
lips, would assemble in the garret of the Motley 
house, and in plumed hats and doublets enact 
tragedies or stirring melodramas. Comedy was 
too frivolous for these entertainments, in which 
Motley was always the leading spirit ; the chief 
bandit, the heavy villain, the deadliest foe. 



1/6 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 

In the school-room also Motley led by div^ine 
right, and expected others to follow. Thus, in 
spite of his dislike for rigid rules of study, he was 
always before the class as one to be deferred to 
and honored wherever honor might be given. 
While still at college Motley seems to have had 
some notion of a literary career. His writing- 
desk v/as constantly crammed with manuscripts 
of plays, poetry, and sketches of character, which 
never found their way to print, and which were 
burned to make room for others when the desk 
became too full. With the exception of a few 
v^erses published in a magazine, this work of his 
college days served only for pastime. Graduated 
from Harvard at seventeen. Motley spent the 
next two years at a German university, where he 
lived the pleasant, social life of the German stu- 
dent, one of his friends and classmates being 
young Bismarck, afterv/ard the great Chancellor, 
who was always fond of the handsome young 
American, whose wit was the life of the student 
company and whose powers of argument sur- 
passed his own. 

Coming back to America, Motley studied law 



JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 1 7/ 



until 1 84 1, when, in his twenty-seventh year, he 
received the appointment of Secretary of Lega- 
tion to St. Petersburg. 

His friends now looked forward to a brilliant 
diplomatic career for him, but the unfavorable 
climate soon led him to resign the appointment 
and return to America. But the St. Petersburg 
visit was not fruitless, for three years afterward 
he published an essay in the North American 
Reviezv v/hich showed a keen appreciation of 
Russian political conditions. The article was 
called "A Memoir of the Life of Peter the 
Great," and its appearance surprised the critics 
who had justly condemned a novel previously 
published by the young author. Plis essay por- 
trayed the character of the great Peter, half king 
and half savage. It showed a full appreciation 
of the difficulties that hindered the establish- 
ment of a great monarchy, and paid due honor 
to that force of will, savage courage, and ideal 
patriotism that laid the foundations of Russia's 
greatness. The reader is made to see this fiery 
Sclav, building up a new Russia from his ice- 
fields and barren valleys ; a Russia of greatcities, 



12 



178 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 

imperial armies, vast commerce, and splendid 
hopes. It was a brilliant and scholarly narrative 
of the achievement of a great man, and it placed 
Motley among the writers of highest promise. 

A year later he began collecting materials for 
the serious work of his life. For his subject he 
chose the story of the old Frisians or Hollanders 
who rescued from the sea a few islands formed 
by the ooze and slime of ages, and laid thereon 
the foundations of a great nation. They raised 
dykes to keep back the sea, built canals to serv^e as 
roads, turned bogs into pasture-lands and morass- 
es into grain -fields, fought with the Romans, 
founded cities, laid the foundations of the vast 
maritime commerce of to-day, and finally, in the 
sixteenth century, when the wealth of their mer- 
chants, the power of their cities, and the progress 
of their arts were the wonder of the world, met 
their worst foe in the person of their own king, 
Philip II. 

From the beginning the Hollanders or Neth- 
erlanders had cherished a savage independence 
which commanded respect even in barbarous ages, 
and this characteristic insured a quarrel between 



JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 1 79 



them and their ruler. Philip II. was King of 
Spain and of Sicily as well as of Holland. Born 
in Spain, he could not speak a word of Dutch. He 
was haughty, overbearing, and unscrupulous, and 
he resolved to make the Hollanders see in him a 
master as well as a king. Already in his father's 
reign there had been trouble because of the grow- 
ing Protestantism which many of the Hollanders 
favored. Already some of the chief Dutch cities 
had been punished for resisting the Emperor's 
authority, and their burghers sentenced to kneel 
in sackcloth and beg him to spare their homes 
from destruction. These things happened in his 
father's time and had made an impression upon 
Philip II., who saw that in every case the royal 
power had been triumphant, and he believed him- 
self invincible. 

Motley painted the life of Philip from the day 
of his inauguration through all the years of re- 
volt, bloodshed, and horror which marked his 
reign. He saw that this rebellion of the Hol- 
landers meant less the discontent of a people with 
their king than the growth of a great idea, the 
idea that civil and religious liberty is the right 



l80 JOHN LOTIIROP MOTLEY 

of all men and nations. To Motley's mind the 
struggle seemed like some old battle between 
giants and Titans. Unlike other historians, who 
looked over the world for a subject, rejecting first 
one and then another, Motley's subject took pos- 
session of him and would not be rejected. His 
work was born, as a great poem or picture is born, 
from a glimpse of things hidden from other eyes. 

But at once he discovered that Prescott had 
already in contemplation a history of Philip 11. 
This was a severe blow to all his hopes. But he 
resolved to see Prescott, lay the matter before 
him, and abide by his decision, feeling that the 
master of history, who was the author of the 
Conquest of Mexico and the Conqitest of Pe7^2i, 
would be the best adviser of a young and un- 
known writer. 

Prescott received the idea with the most gen- 
erous kindness, advised Motley to undertake 
the work, and placed at his disposal all the mate- 
rial which he himself had collected for his own 
enterprise. 

After several years the book appeared in 1856, 
under the title The Rise of the Dutch Republic. 



JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY l8l 

To write this book Motley dwelt for years in 
the world of three hundred years ago, when the 
whole of Europe was shaken by the new Protest- 
antism, when Raleigh and Drake were sailing 
the Atlantic and adding the shores of the new 
world to English dominion, the French settling 
Canada and the Mississippi Valley, Spain send- 
ing her mission priests to California, and the 
Huguenots establishing themselves in Florida. 
Thus the foundations of the American Republic 
were being laid, while Philip was striving to 
overthrow the freedom of the Netherlands. 

Leaving the nineteenth century as far behind 
him as he could. Motley established himself suc- 
cessively at Berlin, Dresden, The Hague, and 
Brussels, in order to consult the libraries and 
archives of state which contained documents re- 
lating to the revolt of the Netherlands against 
Philip n. In speaking of his work in the li- 
braries of Brussels, he says that at this time only 
dead men were his familiar friends, and that he 
was at home in any country, and he calls himself 
a worm feeding on musty mulberry leaves out of 
which he was to spin silk. Day after day, year 



1 82 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 

after year, he haunted the old Hbraries, whose 
shadows held so many secrets of the past, un- 
til the personalities of those great heroes who 
fought for the liberty of Holland were as famil- 
iar as the faces of his own children. William 
ot Orange, called the Silent, the Washington of 
Dutch independence, Count Egmont, Van Horn, 
and all that band of heroes who espoused the 
cause of liberty, came to be comrades. 

And the end rewarded the years of toil. Out 
of old mouldy documents and dead letters Mot- 
ley recreated the Netherlands of the sixteenth 
century. Again were seen the great cities with 
their walls miles in extent, their gay streets, their 
palaces, and churches, and public buildings, and 
the great domains of the clergy, second to none 
in Europe. The nobles possessed magnificent 
estates and entertained their guests with jousts 
and tourneys like the great lords of England and 
France. The tradespeople and artisans who com- 
prised the population of the cities were divided 
into societies or guilds, which were so powerful 
that no act of state could be passed without their 
consent, and so rich that to their entertainments 



JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY I 83 

the proudest nobles came as guests, to see a 
luxuriousness which vied with that of kings. The 
Dutch artists were celebrated for their noble 
pictures, for their marvellous skill in w^ood and 
stone carving, and for the v/onderful tapestries 
which alone would have made Dutch art famous.- 

In the midst of this prosperity Philip 11. 
came to the throne, and soon after his corona- 
tion the entire Netherlands were in revolt. 
Motley has described this struggle like an eye- 
witness. We see the officers of the Inquisition 
dragging their victims daily to the torture-cham- 
ber, and the starved and dying rebels defending 
their cities through sieges which the Spanish 
army made fiendish in suffering. Motley's de- 
scription of the siege of Leyden, and his portrait 
of William the Silent, are among the finest speci- 
mens of historical composition. 

The work ends with the death of the Prince 
of Orange, this tragic event forming a fitting 
climax to the great revolution which had ac- 
knowledged him its hope and leader. 

Motley carried the completed manuscript of 
The Rise, of the Dutch Republic to London, 



l84 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEV 

but failing to find a publisher willing to under- 
take such a work by an unknown author, he was 
obliged to produce it at his own expense. It 
met with the most flattering reception, and the 
reviews which appeared in England, France, and 
America placed Motley's name among the great 
historians. The book was soon translated into 
Dutch, German, and Russian. 

Motley's two other great works were similar 
in character to the first. The second work, 
called The History of the United Netheidands, 
began with the death of William the Silent, and 
ended with the period known as the Twelve 
Years' Truce, when by common consent the in- 
dependence of the Netherlands was recognized 
throughout Europe. 

This work consists of four volumes, the first 
two having been published in i860, and the re- 
maining tv/o in 1867. 

These volumes embrace much of the history 
of England, which became the ally and friend of 
Holland, and are full of the great events which 
made up that epoch of English history. The 
names of Queen Elizabeth, the Duke of Leices- 



JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 1 85 

ter, Lord Burghley, and the noble and chival- 
rous Sir Philip Sidney, who lost his life on one 
of the battle-fields of this war, figure as largely 
in its pages as those of the Dutch themselves. 
The war had ceased to be the revolt of Holland 
against Spain, and had become a mighty battle 
for the liberty of Europe. Every nation was 
interested in its progress, and all men knew that 
upon its success or failure would depend the 
fate of Europe for many centuries. In this 
work Motley's pen lost none of its art. The 
chapters follow one another in harmonious suc- 
cession, the clear and polished style giving no 
hint of the obscurities of diplomatic letters, the 
almost illegible manuscripts, and the contradic- 
tory reports which often made up the original 
materials. 

Like its predecessor, it was at once classed 
among the great histories of the world. The 
Life of John of Bameveld, who shares with 
William of Orange the glory of achieving Dutch 
independence, was the subject of Motley's next 
and last work. The book is not in a strict sense 
a biography. It is rather a narrative of the 



1 86 JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 

quarrel of the Netherlands among themselves 
over theological questions. The country was 
now Protestant, and yet the people fought as 
fiercely over the different points of doctrine 
as when they were struggling for their inde- 
pendence. The book appeared in 1874, com- 
pleting the series, which the author called The 
History of the Eighty Years War for Inde- 
pendence. 

During this period of literary work Motley 
was twice appointed to represent the United 
States at foreign courts. He was Minister to 
Austria from 1861 to 1866, and during the 
stormy period of the Civil War showed his 
powers as a statesman in his diplomatic relations 
with the Austrian Court, which honored him 
always both as a diplomatist and as a patriot, 
his devotion to his country being a proverb 
among his fellows. 

In 1868 he was appointed Minister to Eng- 
land, but held the office only two years. On both 
these occasions Motley proved his ability to 
meet and master questions of state, and there is 
no doubt that, had fortune led him into active 



JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY 1 8/ 



political life, he would have made a brilliant rep- 
utation. 

He died in May, 1877, and was buried in 
Kensal Green Cemetery, near London, Eng- 
land. 



CHAPTER XIV 

HARRIET BEECHER STUWE 



1811- 



Harriet Beecher Stowe, the first distinguished 
woman vyriter of America, was born at Litch- 
field, Conn., in those old New England days 
when children were taught that good little girls 
must always speak gently, never tear their 
clothes, learn to knit and sew, and make all the 
responses properly in church. Such is her own 
story of her early education, to which is also 
added the item that on Sunday afternoons she 
was expected to repeat the catechism, and on 
the occasion of a visit to her grandmother, her 
aunt made her learn two catechisms, that of her 
own faith, the Episcopal, and that of Harriet's 
father, who was a Presbyterian minister. This 
discipline, however, had no depressing effect 
upon the child, whose family consisted of a half- 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 189 

dozen healthy, clever brothers and sisters, a 
father who was loved more than revered even in 
those days when a minister w^as regarded with 
awe, and a stepmother whose devotion made 
the home-life a thing of beauty to be held in all 
after-years in loving memory. 

The old Presbyterian parsonage where Har- 
riet was born had in it one room that was the 
child's chief delight. This was her father's 
study, in a corner of which she loved to en- 
sconce herself with her favorite books gathered 
around her, and read or day-dream, while her 
father sat opposite in his great writing-chair com- 
posing the sermon for the next Sunday. Chil- 
dren's books were not plentiful in those days, 
and Miss Edgeworth's Tales and Cotton Ma- 
ther's Magiialia were her principal resource, until 
one joyful day, rummaging in a barrel of old ser- 
mons, she came upon a copy of The Arabian 
Nights, These flowers of fairy lore took healthy 
root in the imagination of the little Puritan 
child, whose mind had hitherto resembled the 
prim flower-beds of the New England gardens, 
where grew only native plants. The old stories 



190 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 

Opened a new world of thought, and into this 
unknown reahn she entered, rambhng amid such 
wonderful scenes that never again could their 
mysterious charm cease ; when some time later 
her father came down from his study one day 
with a volume of Ivanhoe in his hand, and said : 
'' I did not intend that my children should ever 
read novels, but they must read Scott," another 
door into the realm of fairy was opened to the 
delighted child. 

This power to lift and lose herself in a region 
of thought so different from her own, became 
thereafter the peculiar gift by which she was en- 
abled to undertake the work which made her 
name distinguished. 

The library corner, however, did not hold all 
the good things of life, only part of them. Out- 
side was the happy world of a healthy country 
child, who grew as joyously as one of her own 
New England flowers. In the spring there 
were excursions in the woods and fields after the 
wild blossoms that once a year turned the coun- 
try-side into fairy-land ; in the summer was the 
joy of picnics in the old forests, and of fishing 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE I9I 

excursions along the banks of the streams ; in 
the autumn came nutting parties, when the chil- 
dren ran races with the squirrels to see who 
could gather the most nuts ; and in the winter, 
when the snow and ice covered the earth, life 
went on as gayly as ever, with coasting and snow- 
balling, and the many ways in which the child's 
heart tunes itself to the spirit of nature. 

By the time she was five years old Harriet 
was a regular pupil at a small school near by, 
whither she also conducted, day after day, her 
younger brother, Henry Ward Beecher, after- 
ward the celebrated preacher. She was a very 
conscientious little pupil, and besides her school 
lessons, was commended for having learned 
twenty-seven hymns and two long chapters in the 
Bible during one summer. School-life henceforth 
was the serious business of existence, and in her 
twelfth year she appears as one of the honor pu- 
pils at the yearly school exhibition, and was grati- 
fied by having her composition read in the pres- 
ence of the distinguished visitors, her father, the 
minister, being among the number. The sub- 
ject of the composition was the immortality of 



192 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 

the soul, and into it Harriet had woven, as only 
a clever child could, all the serious thoughts that 
she had gleaned from theological volumes in the 
library, or sermons that her father preached, or 
from the grave conversations that were com- 
mon among the elders of the family. It w^as 
listened to with great approval by the visitors, 
who saw nothing absurd in the idea of a child of 
twelve discoursing upon such a subject, and it 
was especially pleasing to Harriet's father, which 
so delighted the affectionate heart of the little 
writer that she felt no higher reward could be 
hers. 

Harriet's first flight from the home nest came 
in her thirteenth year, when she left Litchfield 
to attend her sister Catherine's school in Hart- 
ford. As her father's salary did not permit any 
extra expense, Harriet went to live in the fam- 
ily of a friend, who in turn sent his daughter to 
the parsonage at Litchfield that she might attend 
the seminary there. This exchange of daughters 
was a very happy arrangement as far as Harriet 
was concerned, as she enjoyed the responsibility 
of being so much her own guardian, and took care 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 193 

of herself and her little room with what she her- 
self calls *' awful satisfaction." 

Here she began the study of Latin, which fas- 
cinated her, the Latin poetry making such an im- 
pression on her mind that it became her dream to 
be a poet. Pages and pages of manuscript were 
now written in the preparation of a great drama 
called '' Cleon," the scene of which was laid in the 
time of the Emperor Nero. Every moment that 
could be spared from actual duties was given to 
this play, which might have grown to volumes 
had not the young author been suddenly brought 
up sharply by her sister, who advised her to stop 
writing poetry and discipline her mind. Where- 
upon Harriet plunged into a course of Butlers 
Analogy and other heavy reading, forgot all 
about the drama, and was so wrought upon by 
Baxter's Samfs Rest that she longed for nothing 
but to die and be in heaven. 

The next years of Harriet's life were spent 
almost entirely at the Hartford school, where 
she was successively pupil and teacher until her 
father removed to Cincinnati, whither she ac- 
companied him with the intention of helping 
13 



194 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 

her sister to found a college for women. And, 
although all undreamed of, it was in this place 
that she was first to feel the inspiration of the 
work that made her famous. During a short 
visit across the Ohio River into Kentucky, she 
saw for the first time a large plantation and 
something of the life of the negro slaves. 
Though apparently noticing little of what was 
before her eyes, she was really absorbing every- 
thing with all the keenness of a first impression. 
The mansion of the planter and the humble cot 
of the negro, the funny pranks and songs of the 
slaves, and the pathos that touched their lives, 
all appealed to her so strongly that, years after- 
ward, she was able to reproduce with utmost 
faithfulness each picturesque detail of planta- 
tion life. 

In her twenty-fifth year Harriet was married 
to Professor Stowe, of Lane Seminary. She had 
for some time been a contributor to various 
periodicals, and continued her literary work af- 
ter her marriage, producing only short sketches 
for various papers, an elementary geography, and 
a collection of sketches in book form under the 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 1 95 

title, The Mayflower. These efforts had been 
well received by publishers, and friends prophe- 
sied a satisfactory career, but it was many years 
afterward before the author gave herself to the 
literary life with the earnestness and devotion 
which so characterized her nature. 

Some of her experiences in this Western home, 
where living was so primitive, were very funny, 
and some were very trying ; but through them 
all Mrs. Stowe kept a clear head and brave 
heart. Sometimes she would be left without 
warning with the entire care of her house and 
children ; often her literary work was done at 
the sick-bed of a child ; and more than once a 
promised story was written in the intervals of 
baking, cooking, and the superintendence of 
other household matters ; one of her stories at 
this time was finished at the kitchen table, 
while every other sentence was addressed to the 
ignorant maid, who stood stupidly awaiting in- 
structions about the making of brown bread. 

After seventeen years' experience in the West- 
ern colleges, Professor Stowe accepted a profes- 
sorship at Bowdoin, and the family removed to 



196 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 

Brunswick, Me. Here her stories and sketches, 
some humorous, some pathetic, still continued to 
add to the household's income, and many a com- 
fort that would have been otherwise unknown 
was purchased with the money thus obtained. 

Mrs. Stowe's first important book took the 
form of an appeal for the freedom of the slaves 
of the South. One day, while attending com- 
munion service in the college chapel, she saw, as 
in a mental picture, the death-scene of Uncle 
Tom, afterward described in her celebrated book. 
Returning home, she wrote out the first draft of 
that immortal chapter, and calling her children 
around her read it to them. The two eldest wept 
at the sad story, which from this beginning grew 
into the book which made its author famous over 
the civilized world. In Uncle Tonis Cabin it 
was Mrs. Stowe's aim to present the every-day 
life of the Southern plantation. She chose for 
her hero one of those typical negro characters 
whose faithfulness and loyalty would so well 
illustrate the fidelity of his race, while his sad 
story would make an appeal for the freedom of 
his people. 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 1 9/ 

Into this stoiy she wove descriptions of South- 
ern life, delineations of negro character, and so 
many incidents, pathetic and humorous, that it 
seemed to present when finished a life-like picture 
of plantation life. The pathetic figure of Uncle 
Tom, the sweet grace of Eva, the delightful 
Topsy, and the grim Yankee spinster show alike 
the sympathetic heart and mind of the author, 
who linked them so closely together in the invis- 
ible bonds of love. The beautiful tribute that 
St. Clair pays to his mother's influence in one of 
the striking passages of the book, was but a 
memory of Mrs. Stowe's own mother, who died 
when her daughter was four years old. No one 
could read this pathetic tale without being touched 
by the sorrows beneath which the negro race had 
bowed for generations, and through which he still 
kept a loyal love for his white master, a pride 
in the family of which he counted himself a 
member, and that pathetic patience which had 
been the birthright of his people. 

The book Uncle Toms Cabin, or Life Among 
the Lowly, ran first as a serial, and came out in 
book form in 1852. Into it the author had thrown 



IQS HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 

all the seriousness of her nature, and it met with 
overwhelming success. It was translated into 
twenty different languages, and Uncle Tom and 
Eva passed, like the shadow and sunlight of their 
native land, hand in hand into the homes, great 
and humble, of widely scattered nations. 

Another plea for the negro called Dred, a 
Tale of the Dismal SwaiJip, followed Uncle 
Toms Cabin within a few years, after which 
Mrs. Stowe turned her attention to the material 
that lay closer at hand, and began the publication 
of a series of New England life. Into these she 
put such a wealth of sympathetic reminiscences, 
with such a fund of keen observation, that they 
stand easily as types of the home-life of her na- 
tive hills. The first of this series was The Minis- 
ter s Wooing, a story of a New England minister's 
love. It is full of the sights and scenes familiar 
to the author from childhood, and is a faithful 
picture of Puritan village life, wherein are intro- 
duced many characters as yet new in fiction. 
Unlike Hawthorne, who sought inspiration in 
the spiritual questions which so largely made up 
the life of the Puritans, Mrs. Stowe found her 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 1 99 

delight in giving the home-life, the household 
ambitions, the village interests, a place in liter- 
ature, thus preserving a phase of society which 
has passed away even in her own lifetime. 

The Minister s /^d?<?/;^^ appeared simultaneous- 
ly with The Pearl of Orrs Island, a tale of the 
Maine coast, in which are introduced an aged 
fisherman and his old brown sea-chest, and other 
characters and accessories all imbued with the 
true sea flavor and forming a story which Whit- 
tier pronounced the most charming New Eng- 
land idyll ever written. 

In Old Town Folks, the most delightful per- 
haps of her New England stories, Mrs. Stowe 
has drawn the character of Harry from the 
memory of her husband's childhood. Professor 
Stowe had been one of those imaginative chil- 
dren, who, when alone, conjure up visions of 
fairies and genii to people empty space. He 
spent many an hour in following the pranks of 
these unreal people. He imagined that these 
creatures of his brain could pass through the floor 
and ceiling, float in the air and flit through 
meadow or wood, sometimes even rising to the 



200 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 

Stars. Sometimes they took the form of friendly 
brownies who would thresh straw and beans. 
Two resembled an old Indian man and woman 
who fought for the possession of a base viol. 
Another group was of all colors and had no shape 
at all ; while the favorite was in human form 
and came and answered to the name of Harry. 

Besides her New England tales, Mrs. Stowe 
wrote a charming novel, Ag7ies of Sori^ento, the 
scene of which is laid in Italy. 

Little Foxes, Queer Little People, and Little 
Pussy Willozu are three books for children, writ- 
ten in the intervals of more serious work which 
included several other novels and some volumes 
of sketches. 

In all her work appears a warm love of hu- 
manity, which she studied under many con- 
ditions. 

Soon after the publication of Uncle Tonis 
Cabin Mrs. Stowe accepted an invitation from 
the Anti-Slavery Society of Glasgow to visit 
Scotland ; her reception was in reality an ovation 
from the nation. At every railroad station she 
had to make her way through the crowds that 



HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 20I 

had gathered to welcome her. Every city she 
visited honored her with a pubhc greeting, and 
even her sight-seeing excursions to cathedrals 
and places of interest w^ere made the occasions 
of demonstrations of joy from the crowds which 
quickly gathered. From the nobility to the 
peasants, who stood at their doors to see her pass 
by, she was everywhere received as one who had 
done noble work for the cause of freedom. In 
Eno^land she met with the same enthusiasm, and, 
both from England and Scotland she received 
large sums of money to be used for the advance- 
ment of the anti-slavery cause in America. Mrs. 
Stowe has left a sketch of this pleasant episode in 
her life in a little work called Sunny Memories. 

Some years later she purchased a winter home 
in Florida, and here she erected a building to be 
used as church and school-house by the poorer in- 
habitants. In this she conducted Sunday-school, 
singing and sewing classes. Her pleasant expe- 
riences in her Southern home are embodied in a 
series of sketches called Palmetto Leaves. 

On the seventieth anniversary of her birthday 
her publishers arranged a garden party in her 



202 HARRIET BEECHER STOWE 

honor, to which were invited all the literary celeb- 
rities of America. It calls up a pleasant pict- 
ure to think of her thus surrounded by the dis- 
tinguished men and women who had gathered to 
do honor not only to her work for literature, but 
to that nobility of soul that had made her long 
life a service for others. 

Whittier, Holmes, and many others contrib- 
uted poems on this occasion. 

In American literature Mrs. Stowe stands as 
its chief woman representative before the Civil 
War, taking high place by right among the novel- 
ists whose sphere is the presentation of national 
life. 



CHAPTER XV 

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 
i8 I 9-1892 

James Russell Lowell was born on the 2 2d 
of February, 18 19, at Cambridge, Mass. Fate 
had willed that he, beyond all other writers, was 
to preserve a certain phase of Yankee life and 
make it the treasure of futurity, and the Cam- 
bridge of his early boyhood was the best training 
he could have received for such a mission. 

The then unpretentious village, with its quiet 
streets shaded with elms, lindens, and horse-chest- 
nuts, was revered throughout New England as 
the home of Harvard College, but it was much 
more than that. It was a little w^orld in which 
still lingered all the quaintness and simplicity of 
early New England life, and Lowell, imbibing 
these influences unconsciously in childhood, was 
able afterward to reproduce their flavor in his 



204 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

literary work and thus preserve them from ob- 
livion. The birthplace of Lowell was Elmwood, 
a charming country-seat formerly occupied by a 
Tory tax-collector, who had emigrated on the out- 
break of the Revolution. It had a large, com- 
fortable house shaded by some of the Cambridge 
elms, which Lowell characteristically remarks 
were unable fortunately to emigrate with the tax- 
collector, and the grounds w^ere beautified by the 
trees and flowers which were the delight of Dr. 
Lowell, the poet's father. 

In Cambridge streets were to be seen many of 
the sights characteristic of New England village 
life, suggesting still the village life of England 
when Shakespeare was a boy. The coach rum- 
bled on its w^ay to Boston, then a little journey 
away, and old women gathered around the towui 
spring for their weekly washing of clothes. At 
the inn were discussed all those questions of law, 
religion, and politics that had not been settled at 
the town-meeting, and the village barber-shop, 
wnth its choice collection of rarities, had the dig- 
nity of a museum. So fascinating was this place 
that the boy who had to have his hair cut was 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 205 

considered in luck, and was usually accompanied 
by several of his play-fellow^s, w^ho took this 
means of feasting their eyes upon the barber's 
treasures. Here were tomahawks, Indian bows 
and arrows, New Zealand paddles and war-clubs, 
beaks of albatrosses and penguins, and whales' 
teeth ; here were caged canaries and Java spar- 
rows, and one large cockatoo who, the barber 
asserted, spoke Hottentot. Old Dutch prints 
covered the walls, and the boys were barbered 
under the pictured eyes of Frederick the Great 
and Bonaparte. Perhaps the choicest treasure 
was the glass model of a ship which the young 
patrons valued at from one hundred to a thou- 
sand dollars, the barber always acquiescing in 
these generous valuations. 

Once a year Cambridge celebrated a curious 
festival called the Cornwallis, in which, in mas- 
querade, the town's people and country people 
marched in grotesque processions in honor of 
the surrender of Cornwallis. There was also 
the annual muster, when the militia were drilled 
under the eyes of their admiring wives, mothers, 
and daughters. But the great event of the year 



206 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

at Cambridge was Commencement Day. The 
entire community was aroused to do its best 
in the celebration of this festival, the fame of 
which had spread to every corner of New Eng- 
land. The village was turned into a great fair, 
where came every kind of vender and showman 
to take the places assigned them by the town 
constable ; the gayly decorated booths extended 
in an orderly row along the streets, and the en- 
tire population gaped unrestrained at the giants, 
fat women, flying horses, dwarfs, and mermaids, 
only taking their eyes away long enough to 
regale themselves with the ginger-beer and egg- 
pop, sold on the stands or wheeled through the 
streets in hand-carts by the enterprising venders. 
The college exercises were dignified and grave, 
as suited the traditions of its classic halls, but to 
the boys who, like Lowell, had but this one 
opportunity in the year, the marvels of the 
booths and peep-shows made Commencement a 
red-letter day. 

Another charm of old Cambridge was found 
in the river, which to the boyish imagination led 
to fairy realms beyond. Once a year the sloop 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 20/ 

Harvard, owned by the college, voyaged to the 
Maine coast to carry back the winter supply of 
wood. Her going and coming was an event 
in the life of the Cambridge schoolboy, who 
watched the departure with wistful eyes, filled 
the time of absence with romantic imaginings of 
adventure in the perilous seas, and welcomed 
her return with eager thirst for the news she 
might bring. This humble little craft held no 
secondary place in the interests of Lowell and 
his mates. The heroic adventures of her crew 
inspired the boys to bold ventures on the duck 
pond, the admiral of the home-made fleet being 
the young Dana, who delighted an after-genera- 
tion of boys by the story of his actual advent- 
ures at sea in the fascinating book, Two Years 
Before the Mast. 

Lowell's first school was not far from Elm- 
wood, and although he did not distinguish him- 
self for scholarship, he went willingly every day, 
returning rather more willingly, perhaps, and 
sending always his boyish salutation of a cheery 
whistle to his mother as he approached the house. 
But in the daily life of the old village, and in the 



208 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

rambles through wood and by stream, he learned 
lessons more valuable than those he found in 
books. Nature, wdio appealed so strongly to his 
heart, had made him a poet, and she took her 
own way of teaching him the mysteries of his art. 

Lowell enjoyed his singularly fortunate and 
happy boyhood as only one gifted with a poetic 
mind could. To him New England village life 
revealed a charm that enabled him in after-days 
to paint a picture of it as lovingly faithful as one 
of Shakespeare's scenes. In his charming remi- 
niscence, Cambridge Thirty Years Ago, he has 
preserved one of the dearest memories of his 
boyhood. Beaver Brook and Indian Summer 
Reveries are also transcriptions of those idyllic 
days of his youth. 

Lowell entered Harvard in his sixteenth year 
and was graduated in his twentieth, during which 
time he says he read everything except the 
books in the college course. It was during 
these years, however, that he studied the great 
poets of the world, while romances, travels, 
voyages, and history were added as a flavor to 
his self-chosen course of study. 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 2O9 

Perhaps he showed the true bent of his mind 
in his boyhood poem, addressed to the old horse- 
chestnuts, whose arms twined themselves around 
his study-room at home. He was class poet for 
his year, but was not allowed to read his poem, 
as he was at the time temporarily suspended 
from the college. In this poem Lowell made 
good-natured fun of Carlyle, Emerson, and 
other philosophers, whose thought was just be- 
ginning to influence their generation, thus hint- 
ing the power which made him later the most 
successful humorist of America. 

After leaving college Lowell studied law 
and was admitted to the bar, a profession which 
he almost immediately saw would make him 
only miserable, and which he soon left. In his 
twenty-second year he published his first book 
of verse under the title A YeaT-'s Life, a volume 
which was mainly inspired by his admiration for 
the woman w^ho afterward became his wife, and 
which gives indication of the powxr which wa:; 
developed later, though in the after-editions of 
his works the poet discarded most of the pro- 
ductions of that time. A little later Lowell 



2IO JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

conceived the idea of starting a magazine, which 
should rival in value and fame the celebrated 
Philadelphia magazines, which were believed to 
stand for the highest literary art in America. 
The magazine was named The Pioneer, and its 
editorship and ownership were shared with a 
friend. It appeared in January, 1843, ^^^ ^'^^ 
for three months, ending in dismal failure, 
though the contributors numbered such names 
as Poe, Elizabeth Barrett, Whittier, and the 
artist Story. It was not until twelve years 
later, when his own fame was well estab- 
lished, that Lowell undertook the editorship 
of another magazine, and put to practical use 
his reserve talent for adapting and selecting 
for popular favor the best literary work of the 
time. 

A year after the failure of The Pioneer, Low- 
ell published a second volume of poems. In 
this collection occur the poems The Legend of 
Brittany ; Promethetis, a poem founded on the 
old Greek myth of Prometheus, who incurs the 
wrath of Jupiter by giving fire to mankind ; 
The Heritage, a stirring ballad, and The Shep- 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 211 

herd of King Admetits, embodying the myth of 
the coming of Apollo to King Admetus and his 
gift of poesy to the world. The volume heralded 
the fame that Lowell was afterward to attain as 
a poet. 

In 1846 the Mexican War was the great po- 
litical question of the day, and the country was 
divided in opinion as to whether the Govern- 
ment had undertaken the war in a spirit of jus- 
tice, or merely for the sake of acquiring new 
territory. The South mainly favored the war, 
while a portion of the North opposed it on the 
principle that the new territory would favor the 
extension of slavery. There w^as much talk of 
glory, and the heroes of the day were the gen- 
erals and soldiers who were winning laurels on 
the Mexican battle-fields. 

Lowell considered the war dishonorable and 
opposed to the principles of liberty, and he took 
a firm stand against it. He did this, not, as may 
be said, in his own way, for the way w^as new to 
him, but in a manner that turned the vaunted 
heroism of the day into ridicule, and appealed to 
the public conscience by its patriotism and hon- 



212 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

esty. Keeping his own personality in the back- 
ground, Lowell sent his wits roving into the 
world of memory and brought from it a hero 
who was destined to rival in fame the leader of 
the Mexican campaigns. This hero possessed 
the old courage, fire, and enthusiasm which had 
braved the British in Revolutionary days. His 
patriotism was a pure flame, his wisdom that of 
the builders who had founded a commonwealth 
of civil rights in the midst of the primeval forest ; 
his common-sense w^ould have made him a king 
in Yankeedom, and his humor was as grim as 
that of the old Puritans, who believed in fighting 
the devil with his own weapons. He came on 
the scene dressed in homespun, and spoke the 
homely dialect of New England, that singular 
speech so unlike any other and w^hich seems to 
have had grafted upon the original English all 
the eccentricities which made the Puritans a 
peculiar people. 

This singular figure which now attracted public 
attention v/as first heard from in the columns of 
the Boston Courier, as the author of a poem on 
the subject of the raising of volunteers for the 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 213 

Mexican War. The poem was written in the 
Yankee dialect and, it was stated, had been sent 
to the office by the poet's father, Ezekiel Biglow\ 
The verses rang with New England canniness, 
and the familiar dialect acquired a dignity never 
before acknow^ledged. Scholars, statesmen, crit- 
ics, and the public at large, after a first few puz- 
zling moments grasped the full force of the new 
crusade, and the standard-bearer and author, 
Hosea Biglow, became the most talked about 
man of the time. Previous to this society had 
laughed at the reformers. Now" people laughed 
with Hosea at the supporters of the war. From 
this time Hosea Biglow's sayings and doings 
were the most popular comment on the political 
situation. Whatever happened was made the 
subject of a poem by Hosea, expressing some- 
times his own opinions and sometimes the opin- 
ions of Parson Wilbur, John P. Robinson, and 
other persons introduced into the series. These 
poems met with tremendous success. Wherever 
it was possible they were set to music and sung 
with all the abandon of a popular ballad. There 
is a story told to the effect that John P. Robin- 



214 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

son grew so tired of hearing the song in which 
he is introduced that he fled across the sea in 
despair. This brought no rehef, however, for 
the street gamins of London and the traveUing 
American and Enghshman, wherever he could 
be found, unconsciously greeted his ears with the 
rollicking refrain : 

" But John P. 

Robinson, he 
Sez they didn't know everythin' 

Down in Judee." 

Among the political poems occurs in ''The 
Notices of the Press," which form the introduc- 
tion, the exquisite love-poem. The Courtin. 

In wit, scholarship, and knowledge of human 
nature, the Biglow papers are acknowledged as a 
classic, and the future student of American liter- 
ature will be ever grateful for this preservation 
of the Yankee dialect by New England's great- 
est poet. 

Lowell's next important contribution to litera- 
ture was the publication of the poem, The Vision 
of Sir Launfal. This beautiful poem, in which 
in a vision a young knight arms himself and 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 21 5 

Starts in search of the Holy Grail, reads like a 
sacred legend of the Middle Ages. It is full of 
the pious spirit of the old monks who still 
believed the story of the existence of the Holy 
Grail, and the possibility of its recovery by the 
pure in heart. This story, which has appealed 
to the art of every age, found in Lowell a poet 
worthy of its expression, and one who has tran- 
scribed the mysticism of the past into the vital 
charity of the present. Though a dream of the 
Old World, it is still the New England poet who 
translates it, as may be seen from the bits of 
landscape shining through it. Glimpses of the 
northern winter; of the wind sweeping down 
from the heights, and of the little brook that 

" Heard it and built a roof 
'Neath which he could house him winter-proof," 

show the poet in his mood of loving reminiscence. 
In his poems Pi^omethetcs, The Legend of B^Ht- 
tany, Rhcecus, and the collection known as Under 
the Willows, which includes the Commemoration 
Ode, Lowell shows his highest point as a poet, 
which is also reached in The Cathedral, Flis 



2l6 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

was a large and generous spirit, which found no 
experience or condition of hfe trivial. He was 
in sympathy with nature and with the aims and 
happiness of humanity. The affectionate side of 
his nature is shown in many of his poems, one of 
the most beautiful being that which is expressed 
in The First Snowfall, a tender and sacred 
memory of one of the poet's children. 

The Commemoration Ode, written in honor of 
the Harvard graduates who fell in the War for 
the Union, was read by Lowell July 21, 1865, 
at the Commemoration Service held in their 
memory. No hall could hold the immense audi- 
ence which assembled to hear their chosen poet 
voice the grief of the nation over its slain in the 
noblest poem produced by the war. To those 
present the scene, which has become historic, 
was rendered doubly impressive from the fact 
that Lowell mourned in his verse many of his 
own kindred. 

A Fable for Critics is a satire in verse upon 
the leading authors of America. The first bit 
was written and despatched to a friend without 
any thought of publication. The fable was con- 



JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 21/ 

tinued in the same way until the daily bits w^ere 
sent to a publisher by the friend, who thought 
the matter too good for private delectation only. 
In this production Lowell satirizes all the writ- 
ers of the day, himself included, with a wit so 
pungent and so sound a taste that the criticism 
has appealed to the succeeding generation, which 
has in nearly every case vindicated the poet's 
judgment of his contemporaries. The author- 
ship remained for some time unknown, and w^as 
only disclosed by Lowell when claimed by others. 
Besides his poetry Lowell produced several 
volumes of charming prose. Among these is 
The Fireside Travels, which contains his descrip- 
tion of Cambridge in his boyhood ; Among My 
Books, and My Study Windoivs, which contain 
literary criticism of the choicest sort, the poet 
easily taking rank as one of the foremost critics 
of his time. Throughout his prose we find the 
same feeling for nature and love for humanity 
that distinguishes his poetry. His whole liter- 
ary career was but an outgrowth of his own 
broad, sympathetic, genial nature, interwoven 
with the acquirements of the scholar. 



2l8 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 

Lowell was for a large part of his life Profes- 
sor of Modern Languages and Belles-lettres at 
Harvard. Soon after its beginning he became 
editor of the Atlantic Monthly, and he also was 
for a time one of the editors of the Noi^th 
American Review, 

Outside of his literary life he was known as a 
diplomat who served his country with distinc- 
tion as minister, successively, to Spain and to 
England. Though finding congenial surround- 
ings in foreign lands, Lowell was always pre- 
eminently an American ; one who, even in his 
country's darkest hour, saw promise of her glory, 
and to whom her fame was ever the dearest sen- 
timent of his heart. Most of his life was spent 
in his old home at Elmwood, where he died in 
1892. 



CHAPTER XVI 

FRANCIS PARKMAN 
1823-1893 

At twelve o'clock on a summer night, nearly 
a half century ago, a young man of twenty-three 
stood in the shadow of a great Indian camp 
watching intently the scene before him. On the 
farther side of the camp a number of Indians 
were gathered about the fire, which threw into 
relief their strong, handsome frames, for they 
were all young and formed, as they stood there, 
the hope and ambition of their tribe. Suddenly 
a loud chant broke the silence of the night, and 
at the same time the young braves began circling 
around the fire in a grotesque, irregular kind of 
dance. The chant was now interrupted by bursts 
of sharp yells, and the motions of the dancers, 
now leaping, now running, again creeping slyly, 
suggested the movements of some stealthy ani- 



220 FRANCIS PARKMAN 

mal ; this was, in fact, what was intended, for 
the young warriors were the '' Strong Hearts" 
of the Dacotahs, an association composed of the 
bravest youths of the tribe, whose totem or tute- 
lary spirit was the fox, in whose honor they were 
now celebrating one of their dances. 

The stranger, who stood looking on at a little 
distance away, since the superstitions of the tribe 
would not allow him to approach too near the 
scene of the solemnities, was Francis Parkman, 
a Harvard graduate, who had left civilization for 
the purpose of studying the savage form of 
Indian life face to face. 

Parkman was born in Boston in 1823. He 
was noted as a child who threw himself body and 
soul into whatever happened to be the pursuit of 
the hour, and thus illustrated even in childhood 
the most striking feature of his character. During 
a residence in the country from his eighth to his 
twelfth year he was seized with a passion for 
natural history, and bent all his energies to col- 
lecting eggs, insects, reptiles, and birds, and to 
trapping squirrels and woodchucks, practising in 
the meantime shooting in Indian fashion with 



FRANCIS PARKMAN 221 

bow and arrow. At twelve he forsook natural 
history and found chemistry the only interest in 
life. For four years longer he now secluded 
himself largely from family life and youthful 
companions, while he experimented in his ama- 
teur laboratory. Acids, gases, specific gravity, 
and chemical equations were the only delight 
of his life, and he pursued his experiments 
with all the ardor of the old seekers of the 
philosopher's stone. But at sixteen the charms of 
chemistry faded, and he became again a haunter 
of the woods, but was sav^ed in the end from be- 
coming a naturalist by an equally strong passion 
for history, a passion so real that at eighteen he 
had chosen his life-work, that of historian of the 
French in the New World. With the idea of 
his work had also come the conception of its 
magnitude, and he calmly looked forward to 
twenty years of hard and exacting labor before 
realizing his hopes. Still, mastered by the spirit 
of thoroughness, he spent all his vacations in 
Canada, following in the footsteps of the early 
French settlers. Here in the forest, he slept 
on the earth with no cove ri no- but a blanket, 



222 FRANCIS PARKMAN 

exhausted his guides with long marches, and 
exposed his health by stopping neither for heat 
nor rain. Fascinated by the visions of forest 
life and with the pictures which the old stories 
called up, Parkman entered upon the literary 
preparation for his work with zeal. Indian his- 
tory and ethnology were included in his college 
course, while he spent many hours that should 
have been devoted to rest in studying the great 
English masters of style. He was graduated 
at twenty-one, and after a short trip to Europe 
started for the Western plains to begin his his- 
torical studies from nature. 

For months he and a college friend had followed 
the wanderings of a portion of the Dacotahs in 
their journey across the Western prairies to the 
Platte River, where they were to be joined by 
thousands of others of their tribe, and take part 
in the extermination of the Snake Indians, their 
bitter enemies. They had suffered from the heat 
and the dust of the desert ; they had hunted buf- 
falo among the hills and ravines of the Platte 
border, and had slept night after night in open 
camps while wolves and panthers crawled dan- 



FRANCIS PARKMAN 22$ 

gerously near. To all intents and purposes their 
life was that of the Indian of the plains, an alien 
to civilization, a hunter of buffalo, and an enemy 
to all human beings except those of his own 
nation. 

It was in the year 1846, three years before the 
discovery of gold in California, and the great 
West was still a land of forests, and the home 
of wandering tribes of Indians. From the Mis- 
sissippi to the Pacific coast the country was en- 
tirely unsettled, with the exception of a few mil- 
itary forts and trading-posts. Here the Indian 
lived as his race had lived from time immemorial. 
Dressed in his robe of skins, with his gay moc- 
casins on his feet, his dog-skin quiver at his back, 
and his powerful bow slung across his shoulder, 
the Dacotah of that day was a good specimen of 
a race that has almost disappeared. The only 
two objects in life were war and the hunt, and 
he was ready at a moment's notice to strike his 
tent and engage in either. 

Six or eight times during the year the Great 
Spirit was called upon, fasts were made, and war 
parades celebrated preliminary to attacks upon 



224 FRANCIS PARKMAN 

Other tribes, while during the remainder of the 
time he hunted the buffalo which supplied him 
with every necessity of life. The coverings for 
their tents, their clothing, beds, ropes, coverings 
for their saddles, canoes, water-jars, food, and 
fuel, were all obtained from this animal, which 
also served as a means of trading with the posts. 
The Indians had obtained rifles from the whites 
in a few cases, but they still largely used the bow 
and arrow, v/ith which their predecessors on the 
plains had hunted the mammoth and mastodon 
in prehistoric ages. Their arrows were tipped 
with flint and stone, and their stone hammers 
were like those used by the savages of the 
Danube and Rhine when Europe was still un- 
civilized. 

While civilization had laid a chain of cities 
and towns around the borders of the continent, 
the American Indian of the interior remained 
exactly as his forefathers had .been. And it was 
to study this curious specimen of humanity, 
whose like had faded from almost every other 
part of the world, that Parkman had come 
among them. He wished to reveal the In- 



FRANCIS PARKMAN 22 5 



dian in his true character, and he thought he 
could only do this by living the Indian life. And 
so, for six months, he shared their lodges, their 
feasts, hunts, and expeditions of war. He be- 
came acquainted with their beliefs in the Great 
Spirit, the father of the universe, and in the 
lesser spirits which controlled the winds and rain, 
and which were found inhabiting the bodies of 
the lower animals. He learned to know the 
curious character of their '' medicine-men " and 
their witch-doctors, and all their strange super- 
stitions regarding the mysteries of life and death 
and the origin of man. 

Suffering constantly from physical ills, and in 
danger of death at any moment from the treach- 
ery of the red men, Parkman yet was able to 
maintain his position among them with dignity, 
and to be acknowledged worthy of their hospi- 
tality, and he took advantage of this to make his 
study of them thorough. The Dacotahs were a 
branch of the Sioux, one of the fiercest of the 
tribes of the plains. In his journey with them 
Parkman traversed the regions of the Platte, 
which was one of the best known routes to Ore- 



226 FRANCIS PARKMAN 

gon and California. Frequent parties of emi- 
grants passed them on their way to new homes, 
and those, with the traders' posts and occasional 
bands of hunters, gave them their only glimpses 
of white faces. Reaching the upper waters of 
the Platte, they branched off for a hunting trip 
to the Black Hills, and then returning, made the 
passage of the Rocky Mountains, gained the 
head-waters of the Arkansas, and so returned 
to the settlements. 

It was a trip full of danger and adventure, 
but Parkman had gained what he wanted — a 
picture of Indian life still preserved in the soli- 
tudes of the plains and mountains as inviolate as 
the rivers and rocks themselves. A few years 
later the discovery of gold in California changed 
this condition almost as if by magic. The plains 
and mountains became alive with unnumbered 
hosts of emigrants on their way to the gold 
fields. Cities and towns sprung up where be- 
fore Indian lodges and buffalo herds had held 
sway. Year by year the Indians changed in 
character and habits, adopting in some measure 
the dress of the wdiites and their manner of liv- 



FRANCIS PARKMAN 22/ 

ing. The true Indian of the plains passed out 
of history, and but for Parkman's visit, even the 
memory of him as an example of the pictu- 
resque freedom of savage life, might have been 
lost. 

A year after his return to the east Parkman 
published an account of his adventures in the 
Knickerbocker Magazine, under the title The 
Oregon Trail, the name by which the old route 
was generally known. Later on these sketches 
appeared in book form. They formed Park- 
man's first book and indicated the scheme of 
his life-work. 

Parkman had elaborated his first idea, and 
now intended writing an account of the history 
of the French influence in America from tiie 
earliest visits of Verazzani and Jacques Cartier, 
down to the time when the EnMish drove out 
the French from Canada and the Mississippi 
Valley, and laid the foundations of v/hat was 
destined to be the American Republic. 

His second book, The Conspiracy of Pontiac, 
published five years after his adventures among 
the Sioux, deals with the last act of the struc^gle 



228 FRANCIS PARKMAN 

between France and England. This book ap- 
peared thus early in the series because at that 
time, on account of ill-health, Parkman could 
not begin any work of vast magnitude such as 
would require exhaustive research. 

The conspiracy of Pontiac, a chief of the Ot- 
tawas, who formed a confederation of the tribes 
to drive the English from the forts near the 
Great Lakes, was a theme complete in itself, and 
yet one that could easily supplement any series 
dealing with similar subjects. Parkman visited 
the scene of Pontiac's exploits, talked with the 
descendants of the tribes which still lingered 
around the Great Lakes, which then formed the 
outposts of the English, and stored ^ his mind 
vv^ith such local traditions and color as would 
give character to the narrative. The book was 
written through the aid of readers and an aman- 
uensis, whose task it was to gather the notes, 
which Parkman sifted until ready for dictation. 
It dealt with one of the most picturesque epi- 
sodes of the French and Indian War, and the 
character of Pontiac — brave, patriotic, and ready 
for any fate — w^as drawn with a master-touch. 



FRANCIS Px\RKMAN 229 

Fourteen years passed by before Parkman 
presented another volume of the series which he 
intended should illustrate the complete history 
of the French in America. This volume was 
called the Pioneers of Fraiice in the New World, 
and opens the theme with a description of the 
early voyagers, thus making it in point of place 
the first book of the series. 

His books, which appeared at different times 
after the Pioneers of France, under the titles 
The Jesuits of North America ; The Discovery 
of the Great West ; The Old Regime in Can- 
ada ; A Half Centitry of Conflict; and Mont- 
calm and Wolfe, indicate each in turn the char- 
acter of its scope. 

They tell the history of the French race in 
America for over two hundred years, beginning 
with the old voyagers who sought in America a 
region of romance and mystery which should 
rival the fairy realms of the poets of the Middle 
Ages, and ending with the last efforts of the 
Indians to recover their land from the grasp of 
the hated English. 

Through all this period the Indians had re- 



230 FRANCIS PARKMAN 

garded the French as friends. Jesuit mission- 
aries had penetrated the wilds of the Mississippi, 
and had brought to the tribes on its banks the 
message of peace and brotherly love. They 
spread the story of Christ from Carolina to the 
St. Lawrence, and from the Mississippi to the 
Atlantic. They lived the Indian life, dwelling 
in lodges, eating the Indian food, conforming as 
much as possible to the Indian habits, and retain- 
ing, in their geographical descriptions, the Indian 
names of the lakes and rivers, so dear to the sav- 
age heart. 

They made, in the main, a peaceful conquest 
of the country, and they won the natives to such 
a degree that in the contest with the English 
which ensued the Indian remained throughout 
the firm friend and ally of the French. The 
English had thus two enemies to deal with 
instead of one, the military knowledge of the 
French being in every case strengthened by the 
subtle and savage modes of Indian warfare. 
This state of things kept the final issue doubt- 
ful, even though the English won victory after 
victory, for the taking of a fort and the slaughter 



FRANCIS PARKMAN 23 1 

or capture of the garrison might be followed at 
any time by a murderous night attack from the 
savage allies, who ignored the civilized methods 
of war and would never acknowledge defeat. 

In this work Parkman not only aimed at the 
history of the actual struggle between France 
and England for the possession of North Amer- 
ica, but he also wished to present clearly the 
story of the French alone, as they appeared in 
their character of settlers and conquerors of 
uncivilized lands. 

In the vivid pictures with which Parkman 
tells this story of their life in the New World, 
we see a strong contrast to the Spanish power 
in South America, as illustrated in the pages of 
history. The Spaniards conquered a race already 
far advanced in civilization, reduced it to slavery, 
destroyed its race characteristics, and made every- 
thing else bend to their insatiate love of gold. 

Very different was the conduct of the French 
in their treatment of the savage tribes that they 
found inhabiting the primeval forests of North 
America. The Jesuit missionaries and the per- 
secuted Fluguenots alike approached the Indian 



232 FRANCIS PARKMAN 

with one message, that of Christian love and 
faith in the brotherhood* of man. To them the 
dark child of the forests, savage in nature, un- 
tamed in habit, was still a brother v/ho must be 
lifted to a higher life. And to do this they lived 
among them as teachers and advisers rather than 
as conquerors. 

In these pages all the heroes of the French 
occupation appear before us as in their daily life 
with the Indians : Marquette, La Salle, Tonti, 
Frontenac, Du Gorgues — whose visit of ven- 
geance is so well described that he is forever re- 
membered by the Indians as an avenger of their 
race — and the men of lesser note. We have 
also a picture of the Hurons, the Iroquois, and 
other tribes as they appeared to the early French 
settlers ; and in fact Parkman has left no phase 
or detail of the movement untouched. It was a 
vast undertaking, and carried out in the midst 
of many difficulties, and its completion placed 
Parkman's name among the greatest historians 
of all time. 

Parkman suffered from ill-health from his 
earliest years throughout his life, and to this 



FRANCIS PARKMAN 233 

was added partial blindness, which made his lit- 
erary work as great a task as that of Prescott. 
Very often he was interrupted for months and 
years by illness, and in the main he had to 
depend upon the help of others in collecting his 
material ; but his purpose never faltered, and the 
end was brilliant with success. 



CHAPTER XVII 

OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

1809-1894 

Among the boys most familiar with the 
scenes described in Lowell's recollections of his 
youth was Oliver Wendell Holmes, the son of 
the pastor of the First Congregational Church at 
Cambridge. Holmes was ten years older than 
Lowell, but Cambrido-e altered little between 
the birthtimes of the two poets, and in the writ- 
ings of both are embalmed many loving memo- 
ries of the old village. 

In his reminiscence of the famous Commence- 
ment Week, so faithfully described by Lowell, 
Holmes says, " I remember that week well, for 
something happened to me once at that time, 
namely, I was born." Many after-touches show 
us hov/ the great w^eek possessed for Holmes 
the same magic charm it held for Lowell. The 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 235 

wonders of the menagerie where he beheld for 
the first time a live tiger, the side-show where 
he enjoyed the delights of Punch and Judy, and 
gazed with awe at the biggest live fat boy known 
to showmen, and the marvels of the toy-counter, 
over which hung the inscription, 

** Look, but handle not," 

shared honors with the Governor's parade, and 
Commencement exercises, and in fact far out- 
ranked them with Holmes, who confessed that 
he would willingly have stayed from morning 
till night viewing their delights, and declared 
that the sound of the tent-raising on the Com- 
mon the night before the show began could be 
compared to nothing but the evening before 
Agin court ! 

Holmes was born in August, when, he tells 
us in one of his charming essays, the meadows 
around Cambridge were brilliant with the car- 
dinal flower, and blossoming buckwheat covered 
the fields, while the bayberry, barberry, sweet- 
fern, and huckleberry made delightful retreats 
for the small boy of the neighborhood. In the 



236 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

same essay he describes the old garden of the 
parsonage, with its Hlac-bushes, hyacinths, tuhps, 
peonies, and hollyhocks, its peaches, nectarines, 
and white grapes, growing in friendly compan- 
ionship with the beets, carrots, onions, and 
squashes, while the old pear-tree in the corner, 
called by Holmes "the moral pear-tree," because 
its fruit never ripened, taught him one of his 
earliest lessons. Bits of reminiscence like this 
scattered throughout the pages of Holmes en- 
able us to reconstruct the scenes of his youth 
and to follow him from the time he was afraid 
of the masts of the sloops down by the bridge, 
''being a very young child," through all the 
years of his boyhood. The parsonage was an 
old - fashioned gambrel - roofed house, which 
Holmes recurs to again and again with loving 
remembrance. The rooms were large and light 
and had been the scenes of stirring events in 
other days. 

On the study floor could still be seen the 
dents of the muskets stacked there in Revolu- 
tionary times, and an old family portrait in one 
of the upper rooms still bore the sword-thrusts 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 237 

of the British soldiers. A certain dark store- 
room contained a pile of tables and chairs, which 
to the child's fancy seemed to have rushed in there 
to hide, and tumbled against one another as people 
do when frightened. Another store-room held an 
arra}^ of preserve-jars containing delicious sweets ; 
before the door of this room he would stand with 
one eye glued to the keyhole while his childish 
imagination revelled in the forbidden luxuries. 

The house had also a ghostly garret about 
which clustered many legends, and these in con- 
nection with certain patches of sand bare of 
grass and vine and called the Devil's Footsteps, 
which might have been seen around the neigh- 
borhood, tended to make the bedtime hour a 
season of dread to the imaginative boy, who saw 
shadowy red -coats in every dark corner, and 
with every unfamiliar noise expected even more 
uncanny visitors. 

Outside was the old garden, sweet and sunny, 
and close to it the friendly wall of a neighbor's 
house, up which climbed a honeysuckle which 
stretched so far back into memory that the child 
thought it had been there always, ''like the sky 



238 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

and stars," and on the whole the atmosphere of 
the old home was most wholesome. 

When Holmes was but a little child he was 
sent to Dame Prentice's school, where he studied 
the primer and spent his leisure moments in 
falhng in love with his pretty girl schoolmates 
or playing with certain boyish toys which were 
always confiscated sooner or later by the school- 
mistress, and went to help fill a large basket 
which stood ready to receive such treasures. At 
ten years of age he began attendance at the 
Cambridgeport school, where he had for school- 
mates Margaret Fuller and Richard Henry 
Dana, and where he remained for some years. 

Holmes says that in these years of his child- 
hood every possible occasion for getting a crowd 
together w^as made the most of — school anni- 
versaries and town centennial^; Election Day, 
wdiich came in May, when everyone carried a 
bunch of lilacs and the small boys ate "election 
buns" of such size that the three regular meals 
had to be omitted ; Fourth of July, a very grand 
holiday indeed, when the festivities were opened 
by the Governor ; Commencement Week, with 



OLIVER WENDELL MOLMES 239 

its glories of shows and dancing on the Com- 
mon, were each in turn made seasons of joy for 
the youthful denizens of Cambridge and Boston. 
Perhaps the most gratifying of all the holidays 
was the old-fashioned Thanksgiving, when even 
the sermon, though of greater length than usual, 
'' had a subdued cheerfulness running through 
it," which kept reminding the children of the 
turkey and oyster - sauce, the plum - pudding, 
pumpkin-pie, oranges, ahrionds, and shagbarks 
awaiting them at home, and the chink of the 
coin in the contribution-boxes was but a joyous 
prelude to the music of roasting apples and nuts. 
Holmes left the Cambridgeport school to 
enter Phillips Academy, and has left us a charm- 
ing account of this first visit to Andover, whither 
he went in a carriage with his parents, becoming 
more and more homesick as the time came for 
parting, until finally he quite broke dov/n and 
for a few days was utterly miserable. But he had 
happy days at Andover, and revisiting the place 
in after years he describes himself as followed 
by the little ghost of himself, who went v/ith 
him to the banks of the Showshinc and Merri- 



240 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

mac ; to the old meeting-house, the door of which 
was bullet-riddled by the Indians ; to the school- 
rooms where he had recited Euclid and Virgil ; to 
the base-ball field, and to the great bowlder upon 
wdiich the boys cracked nuts, proving such a 
faithful guide that when the day was over 
Holmes almost committed the folly of asking at 
the railroad office for two tickets back to Boston. 
Perhaps of all the celebrated men who have 
been pupils at the famous school no one held it 
more lovingly in his heart than he who turned 
back after so many years of success to pay this 
loving tribute to its memory. 

The stay at Andover lasted but a year, during 
vdiich time Holmes discovered that he could 
write verse, and gained a little reputation thereby, 
which led to his being made class-poet when he 
left school to enter Harvard, in his sixteenth year. 
Throughout his college life he kept his reputation 
as a maker of humorous verse, and was perhaps 
the most popular member of the various societies 
and clubs for which Harvard was noted. He 
was graduated in his twentieth year, and vv^ithin a 
year of this time had decided to study medicine, 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 241 

and after a two years' course in Boston went 
abroad to attend lectures in Paris and Edin- 
burgh. 

But the practice of medicine included but a 
few years of Holmes's life, as in 1847 he accepted 
the chair of anatomy and physiology at Harvard, 
holding the position for thirty-five years. 

During his years of study and practice, 
Holmes had gained gradually the reputation of 
a clever literary man whose name was familiar 
to the readers of the best periodicals of the day. 
This reputation began with the publication of a 
poem. Old Ironsides, which was inspired by the 
proposition to destroy, as of no further use, the 
old frigate Constitution, which had done such 
glorious service during the War of 181 2. These 
verses, which begin the literary life of Holmes, 
ring with a noble patriotism which flashed its 
fire into the hearts of thousands of his country- 
men and made the author's name almost a house- 
hold word. They were published originally in 
the Boston Advertiser, but so furious was the 
storm aroused that within a short time they had 
been copied in newspapers all over the land, 



242 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

printed on handbills that placarded the walls, 
and circulated in the streets from hand to hand. 
It was a satisfaction to the young patriot to 
know that his appeal had not been made in vain, 
and that the old ship was allow^ed to rest secure 
in the keeping of a grateful nation. A few 
years later Holmes published his first volume of 
poems, collected from various periodicals, and 
gained medals for some essays on medical sub- 
jects. For many years after this his literary 
work consisted chiefly of fugitive poems, written 
very often for special occasions, such as class an- 
niversaries and dinners. 

It was, however, by the publication of a series 
of essays in the Atlantic Monthly, which was 
started in 1857, with James Russell Lowell as 
editor, that Holmes began his career as the 
household intimate of every lover of reading in 
America. These essays," w^hich are now collected 
in four volumes, appeared in the Atlantic, at in- 
tervals between the series, between 1857 and 
1859, ^^^ thus cover almost the entire period of 
the author's life as a man of letters. 

The first series — The Autocrat at the Break- 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 243 

fast-Table — struck the key-note for the rest, a 
note which showed the author's heart attuned in 
its broad yet subtle sympathy to the heart of his 
race, and created such a friendship as rarely ex- 
ists between author and reader. In the Autocrat 
Holmes introduces a variety of characters which 
at intervals flit throughout the rest of the series. 
The papers- are thrown into the form of talks 
at the breakfast-table between the author and his 
fellow-boarders, and so strong is the personal 
flavor that they seem to the reader like the 
home-letters of an absent member of the family. 
The landlady and her son, Benjamin Franklin, 
the sharp-eyed spinster in black, the young fellow 
*' whose name seems to be John and nothing 
else," and the school-teacher, appear and dis- 
appear side by side with Little Boston, Iris, and 
the characters of the other series, and emphasize 
the life-likeness of the whole. It never seems in 
reading these papers that the di^amatis personce 
are anything else than living human beings, with 
whom Holmes actually converses around the 
boarding-house table or at his own fireside. The 
series, besides The Aittocrat at the Bi^eakfast- 



244 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

Table, includes The Professor at the Break- 
fast-Table, The Poet at the Breakfast-Table, 
and Over the Teactips, the last being separated 
from the others by an interval of thirty years. 

One of the chief charms of these essays is 
found in the bits of biography which stamp thern 
in so many cases as personal history. One may 
read here the nature of the man who could thus 
step back into the realm of childhood, appreciate 
the delicate grace of girlhood, enjoy the robust 
enthusiasm of young manhood, and pause with 
reverent sympathy before the afflicted. Behind 
each character portrayed one feels the healthful, 
generous throb of a humanity to which no am- 
bition of soul could seem foreign or no defect ap- 
peal in vain. Scattered throughout the volumes 
are many charming verses, to some of which 
Holmes owes his fame as a poet. In The A7tto- 
crat at the Breakfast - Table occurs, among 
others, the celebrated poem, The Chambered 
Naictihcs, which shows perhaps the highest point 
to which Holmes's art as a poet has reached. 
This poem, founded upon the many-chambered 
shell of the pearly nautilus, is made by the poet to 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 245 

illustrate the progress of the soul in its journey 
through life ; the spiritual beauty of the verse 
shows it a genuine reflection of that soul illumi- 
nation which made of the poet's Puritan ances- 
tors a peculiar people. Many other poems bear 
the mark of this spiritual insight, and stamp the 
author as possessing the highest poetic sense. 
But it is perhaps in his humorous poems that 
Holmes has appealed to the greatest number of 
readers. Throughout the verse of this class runs 
the genuine Yankee humor, allied to high schol- 
arship and the finest literary art. 

Many of the verses seem but an echo in rhyme 
of the half-serious, half-whimsical utterances of 
the Breakfast-Table Series. Who but the Auto- 
crat himself could have given literary form to the 
exquisite pathos of The Last Leaf, the delicious 
quaintness of Dorothy Q, or the solemn drollery 
of The Katy Did? 

Many of the more popular poems are simply 
vers d' occasion, written for some class reunion, 
college anniversary, or state dinner. These 
poems, collected mider the title Poems of the 
Class of '2g, show Holmes in his m.ost charming 



246 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

mood of reminiscence. Through all his poetry 
shines here and there an intense sympathy with 
nature, for running side by side with his appre- 
ciation of human interests we see ever that deep 
love of nature which is the mark of the true 
poet. Trees and flowers, the seasons, the mead- 
ows, rivers, clouds, and the enchanting mysteries 
of twilight touch his heart to sympathetic vibra- 
tions, and their beauty enters into and becomes 
a part of himself. In this sense some of his 
most charming recollections cease to be merely 
remembrance ; they are the very air and sunlight 
which he breathed and which became incorpo- 
rated into his being. Thus the old garden whose 
fragrance lingers so loving in his memory and is 
enshrined with such tender grace in his pages is 
not a description, but a breath of that far-away 
childhood which still shines for him immortally 
beautiful ; and the fire-flies flitting across the 
darkened meadows bring once again to his mind 
the first flash of insight into the wonder and 
meaning of the night. 

In some charming pages he has told us of his 
love for trees, particularly of the old elms which 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 247 

are the pride of the New England villages, and 
in equally poetic vein he has emphasized the 
beauty of the pond-Hly, the cardinal flower, the 
huckleberry pasture, and the fields of Indian 
corn. 

Dr. Holmes is also known as a novelist as 
well as essayist and poet. His three novels, 
Elsie Vernier, The Gitardian Angel, and A 
Mortal Anlzpatky, are undoubtedly the results 
of his experience as a physician, for each in turn 
is founded upon some mental trait which sets 
the hero or heroine apart from the rest of man- 
kind. In the treatment of these characteristics 
Holmes has made apparent the powerful effect 
of heredity upon the life of the human being. 
These novels are chiefly valuable as character- 
studies by an earnest student of moral science 
whose literary bias tempted him to throw them 
into the form of fiction. While touched with 
the true Holmes flavor, they cannot be called 
fiction of the highest order nor do they emphasize 
Holmes's place in literature. They seem rather 
to show his versatility as a writer and to illus- 
trate his familiarity with those subtle prob- 



248 OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 

lems of character that have always puzzled man- 
kind. 

Holmes's medical and literary essays, poems, 
novels, and other miiscellany have been col- 
lected in thirteen volumes, the last of which. 
Over the Teacups, appeared but a short time 
before his death. 

He spent most of his life in Boston, his home 
there being the favorite meeting-place for the 
most distinguished of his countrymen and a rec- 
ognized rallying-point for foreign guests. He 
was the last of that brilliant circle which made 
New England famous as the literary centre of 
America ; in many senses he combined the ex- 
cellences which have given American letters 
their place in the literature of the world. 

Beside the writers who founded American 
literature must be placed many others whose 
work belongs to the same period. In history 
and biography, besides the work of the great 
historians, we have Hildreth's History of the 
United States, Lossing's Field Book of the Rev- 
olution, Schoolcraft's studies and researches 



OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES 249 

among the Indian tribes, the carefully written 
biographies of Sparks, the Peter Parley and 
Abbott stories for the young, and numerous 
other contributions which throw valuable light 
upon the early history of the United States. 

In fiction the pictures of Southern life by 
Sims, and the romances of Dutch life in New 
York by Hoffman, preserve the colonial tradi- 
tions, and with many other writers of lesser note 
supplement the work of the great novelists. 

The philosophy of Emerson has found expres- 
sion in the writings of Bronson Alcott, Theo- 
dore Parker, and Margaret Fuller. In poetry, 
the still honored names of Fitz-Greene Halleck, 
Joseph Rodman Drake, Elizabeth Kinney, Alice 
and Phoebe Gary illustrate the place that they 
held in the popular heart. Ghief among these 
minor singers stands John Howard Payne, whose 
immortal song has found a home in nearly every 
land. 



